Bronx political leaders Heastie, Diaz Jr., Crespo (photo: Bronx Borough President's Office)

To say the Bronx political landscape is changing is simultaneously both a trite observation and a vast understatement. The once-vaunted Democratic machine in the borough is currently leaderless and has lost many of its longtime fixtures in recent years, with more on their way off the political stage. This comes at a time when progressive and anti-establishment forces are gaining momentum across the city, though in some ways less so in the Bronx than other boroughs. But, there have been signs that such shifts are underway in the Bronx, and it’s unclear how much power what’s left of the older guard can hang onto.

What’s at stake is power, representation, and reform, as well as the public policy outcomes that can come from all three. Many of those challenging longtime power brokers are offering more inclusive democracy, more attention to people of color in districts that have been represented by white elected officials, a louder voice for younger Bronxites, and a fight for more progressive policies. 

Several electoral newcomers embodying major change in New York City politics shot to victory in June’s primaries, some by defeating longtime, party-backed incumbents or the political establishment’s chosen candidate. From Khaleel Anderson and Zohran Mamdani in Queens to Jabari Brisport, Phara Souffrant Forrest, Emily Gallagher, and Marcela Mitaynes in Brooklyn, there were a series of Democratic primaries for state legislative seats that made for a youthful, leftist wave.

It also extended to the Bronx, where Jamaal Bowman defeated longtime incumbent Rep. Eliot Engel in their congressional primary (the district also includes part of Westchester), and Amanda Septimo is set to replace 26-year incumbent Assemblymember Carmen Arroyo, who lost her primary ballot spot due to campaign errors. Septimo will join other young progressives, such as Assemblymember Karines Reyes and State Senators Alessandra Biaggi and Gustavo Rivera, in the Bronx’s state legislative delegation.

Along with Engel and Arroyo, many other longtime pillars of Bronx politics have bowed out, or been kicked out by challengers and voters, in recent years -- and others won’t be around soon given announced plans to leave politics. Meanwhile, still others are in the sights of progressives who see blood in the water and an electorate interested in change, with voters apparently more open to giving pink slips to incumbents and welcoming to candidates who both better represent them demographically and champion policies meant to meet their acute needs, which include challenges due to poverty, poor health, crumbling public housing, and more.

Between 2018 and this year, Joe Crowley (whose former district covered parts of the Bronx, in addition to Queens), Jeff Klein, and Engel were all felled by young primary challengers from their left. Jose Serrano, who’s been in Congress for three decades, is retiring. Their replacements -- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Biaggi, Bowman, and Ritchie Torres, respectively -- represent generational, racial, ethnic, gender, ideological, and LGBTQ-status shifts.

Controversial City Council Member Ruben Diaz Sr. announced that he would be retiring from politics after coming in third in the race to replace Serrano, which was won by his current Council colleague, Torres, and is also pushing out of elected office Assemblymember Michael Blake, who forewent a reelection bid to pursue the seat in Congress and came in second.

Ruben Diaz Jr., who’s been the Borough President for over a decade, surprisingly dropped out of the 2021 mayoral race earlier this year (term limits prevent him from running again for his current post) and said he is leaving politics altogether. A few months later, Marcos Crespo, a longtime ally of both Diaz Jr. and Sr., resigned as both an Assembly member and as chair of the county party.

Chantel Jackson will replace Blake in the Assembly. Amanda Farias, who lost in the 2017 primary as Diaz Sr. moved from the State Senate to the City Council, had already announced her intention to run again in 2021 before Diaz Sr. said he wouldn’t seek another term. Another young progressive who ran in 2017, Michael Beltzer, is also considering running for the seat again. Marjorie Velázquez, also a young progressive, has announced her intention to challenge Council Member Mark Gjonaj, whom she narrowly lost to in 2017 as Gjonaj moved from the Assembly to the Council.

The field to replace Diaz Jr. as Borough President is still developing, with City Council Members Vanessa Gibson and Fernando Carbera and Assemblymember Nathalia Fernandez in the race already.

The Bronx political machine, which has perhaps been the strongest Democratic county party in the five boroughs in recent years, still has power. Before being elected Assembly Speaker, Carl Heastie reigned as Bronx county party leader for over seven years, then passed the baton to Crespo, an ally, and still wields tremendous influence over the party, as well as the entire city and state given his perch in Albany.

Many current elected officials in the borough have ties to the party apparatus, as do candidates for City Council running in the 2021 elections that will see all of city government on the ballot. The party was influential in selecting and electing Darcel Clarke to become Bronx District Attorney as her predecessor left the post for a judgeship in a move orchestrated by county leaders, who continue to have strong influence over judicial appointments and patronage jobs at various government offices, like the Board of Elections.

But given recent losses, departures, and planned departures, the future of the county party’s power is very much unknown. A lot depends on Heastie, as well as the next county party chair, and the machinations and outcomes of the 2021 election cycle, which will then be followed by a state and federal election year in 2022.

Other examples of change in Bronx politics -- dominated by Democrats who enjoy an overwhelming voter registration advantage in the borough, which currently has not one Republican elected official (other than President Trump, whom Bronx voters opposed but for 9.5% of the 2016 vote) -- are developing.

State Senator Biaggi recently left the Benjamin Franklin Reform Democratic Club (BFRDC), a local powerbroker, to form her own political club in the area. She told the Riverdale Press that “My values are not aligned with what the club's leadership is representing.” 

Longtime Assemblymember Jeffrey Dinowitz, a member of the BFRDC, received only 63.5% of the vote in his 81st Assembly District (Riverdale, Kingsbridge) primary against what one person familiar with Bronx politics described as “token opposition.” Dinowitz’s district partially overlaps with Biaggi’s 34th Senate District. He could face difficult reelection prospects in 2022 if a well-resourced candidate emerges. The Assemblymember’s son, Eric Dinowitz, is currently running in City Council District 11, which will likely have a special election early next year after incumbent Council Member Andrew Cohen was nominated for a Supreme Court judgeship at last month’s judicial convention, a process heavily controlled by county party leadership.

“I am elated about what’s happening in the Bronx right now and I’m looking forward to working with whoever the City Council brings us next year, because it will be a better batch than before,” said State Senator Rivera, who won his seat in 2010 as an independent reformer without county party support.

“We’re in a state of transition and it gives new people the opportunity to be tried out and step into the void,” said Bronx Assemblymember Victor Pichardo, who told Gotham Gazette he is considering a run for county party chair.

Although Heastie wields tremendous political power as Assembly Speaker, the county party’s ability to run candidates for open seats (with no incumbent) and win or to protect incumbents appears significantly diminished. Given the city is on the eve of the 2021 municipal elections, those many races are likely to be more wide open and competitive than in past cycles.

“The county organization’s purpose for the last decade has really been, how do we best organize ourselves so we provide the best base so that Ruben [Diaz Jr.] can run for mayor,” said Rivera. “As you saw, as soon as Diaz Jr. dropped out, then all of a sudden the county chair [Marcos Crespo] said ‘alright, then I’m out, deuces.’ He didn’t even wait until the year was done!”

With Diaz Jr. out of the mayoral race, the Bronx county party’s support is up for grabs among the remaining candidates, as will potentially be the backing of the Bronx’s new delegation of Council members in the race to succeed Corey Johnson as speaker, which will unfold in late 2021 and January 2022. But as shifts in borough politics indicate, it’s unclear how much weight a county party endorsement for mayor will carry, and whether there will be a cohesive block of county votes for the next Council speaker.

“Overall, there’s a sentiment where people have felt like they’ve been excluded politically and now they want a voice,” said Assemblymember Reyes, noting that this is a phenomena citywide, not just in the Bronx. Combined with many incumbent officeholders leaving public life, “it’s made the Bronx a hotbed for progressive change. People just want change and history has shown us that happens all the time. We’re in the middle of that right now.”

“The problem I have [with the county party],” Rivera said, using a Game of Thrones reference, “is that I don’t ‘bend the knee.’ Ultimately, for me, there are so many people that are more about the intrigue than the policy.” Rivera and others Gotham Gazette spoke with for this article believe that the county party has been slow to adapt to the contemporary reality in the Bronx and slow to include newer demographic groups and progressives in its processes.

These changes come at a time of acute pressure for the Bronx, on top of longstanding systemic problems. The Bronx is home to the highest poverty rates in the city and the country, is where a disproportionate share of the city’s “essential workers” live, and is the borough hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic, both in terms of fatalities and economic consequences.

Since Ruben Diaz Jr. assumed the borough presidency, the borough’s unemployment rate fell from 14.1% in January 2010 to 4.6% in February 2020, an all-time low for the Bronx. But amid the coronavirus fallout, the unemployment rate in the Bronx jumped to 19.8% as of July. At the same time, the Bronx has languished as the unhealthiest county in the state, while also placing last in several other quality-of-life metrics.

“We’re the unhealthiest borough, we’re the poorest borough, and there’s a lot of scrutiny now,” John Doyle, a former City Council candidate and Bronx political reformer, told Gotham Gazette. “The Bronx machine was caught resting on its laurels, because until Trump got elected, people were never really opening the hood and kicking the tires on their Democratic incumbents.”

Several elected officials and others interviewed by Gotham Gazette pointed to the 2016 presidential election as the spark for many Bronxites to get involved in local politics for the first time. Groups like Bronx Progressives and the Bronx/Upper Manhattan Democratic Socialists of America branch were created in the wake of Trump’s election. That helped encourage several insurgent candidates like Farias, Beltzer, Velázquez, and Doyle to run in 2017, and led to two of the most consequential and stunning upsets in modern New York political history in Ocasio-Cortez’s and Biaggi’s 2018 wins. Now, Bowman followed suit in 2020. 

County Party Chair Race
While there is little overt campaigning going on for Bronx Democratic Party chair, there are several candidates maneuvering largely behind the scenes to replace Crespo in the top job in the borough’s political apparatus. The party convention, where the next party chair will be elected, will likely take place in September, although this is not definite due to the pandemic.

The county chair is elected by a simple majority of the district leaders. The executive committee (which includes Assemblymembers Latoya Joyner, Jeffrey Dinowitz, and Michael Bendetto, among others) can exercise a role in the process, but act like “super-delegates” and traditionally within the Bronx county committee, the executive committee would not overturn the decision of the district leaders.

As Gothamist reported last month, nine of the 24 district leaders in the Bronx were elected without county party support. However, according to Beltzer, a cofounder of the group Local Democrats, the nine aren’t necessarily anti-establishment progressives. “It’s a good sign, but I’m not sure if it’s necessarily a progressive sign. I don’t know that the nine people who ran would call themselves progressive. They could just be community- and politically-minded folks who just work outside the machine.”

Assemblymembers Victor Pichardo, Latoya Joyner, and Karines Reyes, among others, have all been touted as potential next county party bosses. Pichardo and Reyes would both be the first Dominican to hold the position; Joyner and Reyes would be the first woman in the position.

“I see myself as a bridge-builder,” said Pichardo, who has made public his intention to run for county party chair, in an interview with Gotham Gazette, highlighting a desire to focus on “solutions that benefit the people we serve” over “political wrangling and bickering.”

As county party chair, Pichardo says he would “bring all the stakeholders together and try to hash out the differences among members and community leaders. People really need to understand what the Bronx Democratic Party is about and we need to define it for ourselves. The new Democratic Party is a big tent party. We can harness all that energy for the greater good.”

Pichardo sees the recent success of progressive organizations and candidates in the Bronx as “nothing new. The left-wing movement has existed in the Bronx since at least the 1960s,” with the growth of the Puerto Rican community in the borough at the time. “It’s a cyclical thing that happens and now there’s a new wave with change that’s hopefully for the better.”

“For me, it’s about bringing everybody together because the more that we fight internally and politically, the less focus we have on the real issues here in the borough,” Pichardo said.

While Reyes told Gotham Gazette she’s “not actively campaigning” for the post, she does have ideas on what the next county party chair should do once elected and said she’d consider vying for the position if the support is there.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty within the body of the party to determine how this will go,” Reyes said in an interview. “The person who is going to take this seat is not just going to have to campaign in the old sense of getting people in line, but whoever’s vying for this seat needs to talk to these new district leaders about how to make the party different and more inclusive.”

Reyes wants to make the county party’s endorsement process more transparent, saying “the purpose of the party is to inform and educate the electorate and that requires a lot of organizing and getting people involved, which hasn’t been the case. The party has been good at engaging those folks who’ve always been engaged, but they haven’t been good at the new base of the Democratic electorate.”

“The next chair of the party is in for a big headache,” Reyes continued.“I anticipate that elected officials in the Bronx will always have primaries going forward.” Reyes said this is a positive change.

Generational & Demographic Shifts
“We’re seeing a generational shift,” said Eli Valentin, a political analyst, professor, and Democratic consultant. “The electorate is tending to be more in line with the progressive values of the younger generation, because we’re also seeing a generational shift with the voting population.”

The Bronx has the youngest median age of any of the city’s boroughs at 34, compared to the citywide median of 36.6.

In 2016, the average age of the four members of the House of Representatives representing at least part of the Bronx was 70.5 years, but come next year the average age of the Bronx’s four House representatives will be 43.3, a shift catalyzed by the ascension of City Council Member Torres to replace retiring Rep. Serrano, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez defeating Crowley, and Bowman defeating Engel. Rep. Adriano Espaillat also represents parts of the borough, taking the post after Charles Rangel’s retirement.

Additionally, out of those four, two -- Ocasio-Cortez and Bowman -- are members of the Democratic Socialists of America.

The Bronx’s 15-person state legislative delegation had an average age of 54.4 in 2016, but the average age will be 42.8 in the new year, with younger legislators like Septimo, Reyes, Biaggi, and Jamaal Bailey replacing older predecessors in recent years.

“The Bronx is changing in a way I haven’t seen in my lifetime,” said J.C. Polanco, a Republican consultant from the Bronx and former Board of Elections commissioner. “Politicians used to get elected with only a couple thousand votes, so a well-oiled insurgent campaign can end up winning.” Polanco said he doesn’t always think that’s a good thing.

The borough also has more women as a share of the population than any other borough (89.2 men for every 100 women, compared to 91.2 for every 100 citywide). In 2014, three of the 15 members of the Bronx’s state legislative delegation were women, but that number will increase to five of 15 in the new year.

In the City Council, only two of the nine districts that cover at least part of the Bronx are represented by women (Diana Ayala and Vanessa Gibson). As the 2021 city election cycle heats up, there is currently at least one woman running in all nine districts. Meanwhile, Gibson and Fernandez are seeking the borough presidency.

“We’re no longer waiting for permission to run,” Reyes said, when asked about the recent surge in women candidates seeking office in the borough.

The Bronx has long been the least-white borough in New York City, but the white population has declined by more than a third in recent decades, making up 14.5% of residents in 2000 but only 9% as of 2019. There are only two white state Assemblymembers left from the Bronx (longtime Assemblymembers Jeffrey Dinowitz and Michael Benedetto), while there were three earlier this decade.

The decline in the borough’s white population, which has traditionally been predominant in northern Bronx neighborhoods such as Riverdale, can be attributed to older white residents moving or dying, and an increase in the number of immigrants and Bronxites of color throughout the borough. So far at least, a recent influx of new white residents in the South Bronx, enticed by relatively cheaper rent than nearby Manhattan, has not offset this change. Additionally, many Dominican New Yorkers have been priced out of Upper Manhattan and many have moved to the Bronx.

“I don’t think gentrification will be as pronounced [in the South Bronx] as it is in other parts of the city,” Valentin said. He attributes this to one key difference between the South Bronx and areas of the city that are currently experiencing gentrification, such as western Queens and northwest Brooklyn, which is that there is a higher concentration of public housing developments in the South Bronx than those places, which will make gentrification of the South Bronx a slower process than what has taken place elsewhere.

While Bronx politics has been dominated for decades by the Puerto Rican community (including Serrano, Diaz Jr., Diaz Sr., Crespo, Torres, and others now and in the past), several newer elected officials, such as Reyes and Pichardo, hail from the growing Dominican community in the borough (Espaillat is also Dominican). While the two communities share some similarities and common issues (such as language access), immigration is a key concern for Dominican Americans in a way that it is not for Puerto Rican Americans, who are American citizens from birth.

“We as a Dominican community, as an immigrant community, can no longer be ignored,” said Reyes. “People want representation that looks like them, understands their culture, and speaks to them, because there are nuances.”

This is just one nuance that differentiates this ascendant community from the entrenched political powers in the borough. Furthermore, the Dominican diaspora is often politically divided internally along party lines in the Dominican Republic. Last month, the Dominican Republic held its presidential election and, in the period leading up to it, Bronxites in some neighborhoods were more likely to see posters for Dominican presidential candidates than New York primary candidates.

“In the primaries, when I was out campaigning, there were folks campaigning for an election in another country. It seems like they were even more active for those campaigns than the campaigns here. There’s a bit of apathy for American politics,” Reyes told Gotham Gazette.

Dominican Americans “are very much entrenched in Dominican politics and that divides them even here in the Bronx. That makes it very hard to organize them as a Dominican community, because they’re fragmented within themselves,” said Reyes.

Rise of Progressive Groups in the Bronx
“The Bronx is definitely changing for the better, politically. We have more people engaged, more people holding electeds accountable, and electing people that represent their values,” said Amanda Farias, who is running again in City Council District 18 in 2021 after competing against Diaz Sr. in 2017. “I can only see it getting more progressive and democracy moving more left in the Bronx.”

“Progressive organizations are getting better and better at identifying and working with young, progressive people of color in those districts who relate to their communities” said Camille Rivera, a consultant at New Deal Strategies. “It’s not the same-old, same-old lefty, DSA brand. They’ve created a space where energetic community organizers can run and make a difference.”

“The Bronx Democratic Party feels less invincible than it did a year ago, but we still have hints of their power,” said Jazz Hooks, of the Bronx/Uptown Manhattan branch of the New York City branch of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). “We have a lot of potential. Our message can reach far beyond who the conventional wisdom says it can reach.”

“The racial dynamics [within the DSA] are something that we need to address and we are seeing progress,” said Hooks, who co-founded the NYC-DSA’s Afro-Socialist Caucus, noting the better-than-expected performance of Samelys López in the Democratic Primary for the 15th Congressional District, in the South Bronx, shows that the DSA’s message appeals to communities of color.

While not a citywide group, the Bronx Progressives are a new group with similar objectives (López is a co-founder). According to Beltzer, the Bronx Progressives “came out of the Bernie Sanders movement in 2016 and we wanted to make sure that we continued to organize the community. We wanted to make sure that people had a political home that might not exist in the county organization.”

Beltzer says “a lot of progressives in the Bronx are still in their own silos, but it’s definitely something that’s building.”

Ben Max contributed to this story.

Note - this article has been updated.

CUNY students during their Natural Areas Conservancy internship

Even studying the great outdoors remained mostly indoors this year for CUNY students. Twelve young adults interested in ecology from the public university system participated in a virtual internship with The Natural Areas Conservancy this summer to create an ecological profile of parks across the city. Despite the pandemic, these students gained paid work experience during a widespread job drought and were able to develop their ecological skills and knowledge. Plus, the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation received a detailed analysis of planted areas to inform its management in the future.

“The students this summer, we were only able to accomplish so much because they were so self-motivated and passionate and really took a lot of the work upon themselves and went above and beyond my expectations,” said Jessica Hoch, the head of the Natural Areas Conservancy intern program and a project manager in monitoring and assessment. “And I think they are especially connected to this work because although this was remote, they’re working in these areas that they’ve grown up with in their kind of backyard.”

The Natural Areas Conservancy, a nonprofit focused on the health of New York City’s forests, pushed the CUNY internship program into its fifth year, according to Executive Director and co-founder Sarah Charlop-Powers, but the coronavirus pandemic determined the organization’s first remote offering. For eight weeks from June 15 to August 7, young adults used data sets from previous interns and historical imagery from virtual city maps to examine about 30 planted areas controlled by the city Parks Department, the Natural Areas Conservancy partner for this project, Hoch said.

With a skyrocketing city youth unemployment rate, reported at 35 percent among 16-to-24 year-olds in May by the New York City Comptroller’s Office, up from 6 percent pre-pandemic in February, the Natural Areas Conservancy initiative allowed some specialized training for students this summer from one of the most diverse ‘ecosystems’ — the City University of New York (CUNY). Interns came from the College of Staten Island, Brooklyn College, Hunter College, Baruch College, City College, and Lehman College, according to Hoch. They worked 35 hours a week, she said, with regular “crew members” earning $17 an hour while intern-supervisors earned $22 an hour. Charlop-Powers said they shifted their programming to include CUNY a few years ago for the Natural Areas Conservancy to serve as a job-creator and invest in the local talent pool.

“I think it’s really kind of a deep belief of our organization that nobody sort of cares about New York City or kind of relates to New York City as well as the people who are growing up in our communities, spending time in our parks,” said Charlop-Powers. “And that if we have the opportunity to help be a stepping stone for folks in their professional development, people who are interested in pursuing environmental careers, that feels like a real way to sort of fulfill our mission of caring about natural spaces in New York City and caring about the way we use them.”

The Natural Areas Conservancy collaborated with the Parks Department to design a feasible, remote internship, according to Hoch. She said when they decided to conduct a virtual program in mid-April, they brainstormed ways to provide skill-building and training opportunities for young people while also supplying a valuable deliverable to the Parks Department.

This summer, the interns created an ecological profile of the past, present, and future of planted forests across five city parks: Forest Park in Queens, Riverside Park in Manhattan, Van Cortlandt Park in The Bronx, Prospect Park in Brooklyn and the Greenbelt on Staten Island. Hoch said the Parks Department had previously removed invasive species and sowed native plants to increase the ecological health of those areas. The students used data sets, especially from previous interns, to characterize the land use history of the sites from the 1920s to the present, analyze current forest conditions and predict the planted areas’ trajectory in the future, according to Hoch. 

To examine the past even further, said Hoch, they used historical imagery from the New York City Department of Information Technology & Telecommunications, or NYC DoITT, which provides city-wide GIS, or geographic information system, maps. They also looked at a list of species projected to maintain or increase their range with climate change versus what the Parks Department planted to capture what might survive better as the department plants in the future.

For each site, interns created charts and maps with the abundance of each planted species for every site, which the Natural Areas Conservancy turned over to the Parks Department along with their other analyses, according to Hoch. She said practitioners at each site, with this comprehensive look, can then adjust their management activities as needed to have a healthier park. Darius LaFond said this is his second year participating in this internship, and while the interns could interact with the actual sites last year, this time he gained different but useful abilities.

“Because this year it was mostly online, it kind of helped me with the data management and more computer skills,” said LaFond, a senior from Baruch College majoring in biology and minoring in environmental sciences. “And I think it would help me in the future because, well there are gonna be times where I wouldn’t be able to actually physically go out into the field and do research, so I would have to know how to use the data that I’ve been given to make a guess about what is going to happen.”

Interns mostly learned data and image analysis techniques to study the parks indoors for their eight-week experience, but the Natural Areas Conservancy found ways for them to engage with nature outdoors as well — in a socially distanced manner. As they surveyed how COVID-19 rates decreased across the city, Hoch, Charlop-Powers and the Natural Areas Conservancy organized a social assessment component of the internship, where interns, in pairs, would conduct interviews in parks with visitors on how they were now using the natural areas. They included those conversations in their analysis to observe how behavior and attitudes towards parks had changed during the pandemic.

Hoch also described how they would assign interns individual scavengers hunts in their neighborhoods or the closest natural space to them, and they would learn how to identify trees or other basic botany techniques. Carolina Salane, a master’s student from City College studying sustainability in the urban environment, said it was important to her to get some breaks outside.

“It wasn’t any scheduled time in the day. We were just equipped with these new plant IDing skills and we were able to set up activities with our own teams and say, ‘Okay, for three hours or two hours we’re going to go out and just ID trees,’” said Salane. “And that was great, because we got some time away from the screen and I got to see my neighborhood in a new way and now I know all the trees that are on the block.”

Salane served as an intern supervisor this summer. Along with her own work, she said she oversaw the work of two other interns. Hoch described a collaborative work environment amongst the interns where they would meet through video calls and check each other’s work to increase accuracy. Salane said if other interns were confused about any part of the process, other interns would jump in to demonstrate how to use certain programs or analysis techniques. 

“I walked away feeling like a much more confident ecologist even though I hadn’t spent that much time in the field,” said Salane. 

While the interns managed to work together in their respective homes, communicating came with challenges. Aldrin Ador, an intern supervised by Salane, said when he tried to explain his work to other interns, it felt difficult to gauge whether they understood.

“If they were with me in the room, I could show them how I’m doing this with a mapping software or with Excel,” said Ador, an undergraduate senior at Lehman College in a dual degree program for a bachelor’s in environmental sciences and a master’s in GIS. “There is a camera but I think it’s better for me to be in front of them to figure out if they’re confused or just read their general body language.”

Ador said the group’s collaborative spirit kicked in again as they brainstormed ways to explain processes more clearly to each other. He said Salane advised him to make an explainer document on how to create a map for the other interns.

Youth employment programs like the Natural Areas Conservancy internship serve as summer learning experiences for youth that research has shown lead to an increase in community engagement, social skills, job readiness skills, work habits, and college aspirations for young people. Ador said the internship let him apply the skills he learned in the classroom to “real-world conservation work.”

“This really gave me the context of, you know, you can take as many ecology classes as you can, but you’re not really gonna know what that perspective is like until you participate in this work,” said Ador. “I’d want to continue that work either with NAC, NYC Parks, the forestry service or any organization that’s focused on environmental issues. That’s generally what I want to do. I think it helped me solidify that.”

Top (l-r): Tahanie Aboushi, Alvin Bragg, Eliza Orlins, Janos Marton, Tali Farhadian Weinstein
Bottom (l-r): Liz Crotty, Dan Quart, Diana Florence, Lucy Lang

The nine Democratic candidates currently running for Manhattan District Attorney in next year’s June primary shared the Zoom debate stage for the first time Tuesday night at a three-hour forum hosted by the Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club, an LGBTQ-focused political organization. Each candidate was asked questions individually on a wide range of issues relating to LGBTQ rights, police accountability, and more, but there were some instances in which candidates challenged each other.

The forum came a month after the NYC Program Council hosted the first five declared candidates for the inaugural forum of the 2021 Manhattan District Attorney race, which is unfolding amid uncertainty about whether incumbent Democratic District Attorney Cy Vance will seek another term.

The nine candidates participating Tuesday night were Assemblymember Dan Quart; former Chief Deputy State Attorney General Alvin Bragg; former ACLU attorney Janos Marton; former Assistant District Attorney and criminal defense lawyer Liz Crotty; Tali Farhadian Weinstein, the former general counsel in Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez’s office; former Assistant District Attorney Diana Florence; public defender Eliza Orlins; civil rights attorney Tahanie Aboushi; and, Lucy Lang, a former Assistant District Attorney and the director of John Jay College’s Institute for Innovative Prosecution.

Quart has made his name in the Assembly sponsoring criminal justice reform laws like reducing the use of cash bail. Bragg touts his work in the State Attorney General’s office, investigating Donald Trump, Harvey Weinstein, and others. Marton helped lead the Close Rikers campaign and organized decarceral efforts nationally with the ACLU. As an ADA, Crotty prosecuted street crime, among other offenses, and represented families of 9/11 victims in private practice.

In the Brooklyn DA’s office, Weinstein created the Post-Conviction Justice Bureau to review previous convictions for possible exonerations. Florence, who left the Manhattan DA’s office earlier this year over allegations of prosecutorial misconduct, touts her leadership of that office’s Construction Fraud Task Force. Orlins says her decade defending low-income New Yorkers makes her the best candidate to lead the office in a new, more progressive direction. Aboushi has sued the NYPD over misconduct allegations. Lang touts her leadership in developing data-driven criminal justice reform.

District Attorney Vance did not participate in the forum and has not stated whether he will run for reelection. The entry of Lang, a Vance ally, into the race last week and Vance’s paltry fundraising numbers in the first six months of the year are believed to signal that Vance is unlikely to run, especially given the all-important Democratc primary is now less than 10 months away. Lang’s Institute for Innovative Prosecution is funded in part by grants from Vance’s office, which funds many causes, mostly through massive settlements it has reached with financial institutions.

The Jim Owles Club, the forum host, advocates for the decriminalization of sex work and repeal of the “walking while trans” law, among other criminal justice reforms, as well as LGBTQ rights, universal healthcare, and reproductive rights, among other progressive causes. The club is one of New York’s two major citywide progressive LGBTQ political clubs affiliated with the Democratic Party, along with the Stonewall Democrats.

The club’s president, Allen Roskoff, said in a statement that the forum was “a historic opportunity to get an early look at the candidates for one of the most important offices in the country.” The forum had about 100 digital attendees throughout the three-hour event.

“We consider this one of the most important races of 2021,” Roskoff told attendees at the start of the forum. He noted that the club distributed over 50,000 pieces of literature in support of candidates during the 2020 state primaries and would be making its endorsement in the Manhattan District Attorney primary coming months.

“We don’t want a district attorney who is just qualified…and continues to do the status quo. We want a district attorney that people across the country will take note of,” Roskoff said, pointing to San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin, Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner, and Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez as models. “We want a district attorney who’s going to get people out of prison and not spend all their time locking people up.”

There was widespread agreement on many of the issues brought up during the forum. All nine candidates voiced support for Manhattan State Senator Brad Hoylman’s elder parole bill and for repeal of the “walking while trans” law, and promised to visit constituents serving prison terms and to at minimum continue the current sanctuary city policies in the borough.

All but one candidate, Weinstein, expressed support for sex work decriminalization and were against the Nordic model. Florence said that the state “needs to be mindful of the way we draft the bill,” voicing concerns about human trafficking, and said she would “tread lightly” on the issue. Weinstein said she “was not there yet” on sex work decriminalization but that she was “open to revisiting her position” and supports the Nordic model, which maintains the criminalization of buyers of sex while decriminilizing sex workers themselves.

On police funding, several candidates called for the city to reduce the NYPD budget. Florence said that the police department’s nearly $6 billion annual operating budget “makes no sense” when other agencies are underfunded. Aboushi said that “the city has come to rely on the NYPD to enforce social inequities and make them crimes.” Lang called for “community-coordinated responses to conduct that doesn’t need police involvement.” Bragg said he’d advocate to “undo Bill de Blasio’s bloating of the NYPD budget” and denounced the “funny budget math” on moving school safety officers to the Department of Education.

The District Attorneys Association of the State of New York (DAASNY) was a contentious issue at the forum, with several candidates promising not to join the organization, which has come under scrutiny by criminal justice reformers. Orlins, Aboushi, and Quart said they would not join the association. Quart said “it’s a fallacy to believe anyone can join that organization and reform it.” Aboushi called it “the antithesis of what I stand for.”

Lang said she would join the DAASNY because a “diversity of voices makes a difference” and she would try to change others’ minds. Bragg said that he would have an “adversarial relationship” with the group while joining it. Florence said she would join, but said she had “brought other DAs to more progressive stances” and would do the same at the DAASNY.

When asked whether they would support the abolition of mandatory minimum sentences, all the candidates in attendance at the time (Weinstein was not yet present) said they would, except Crotty, who said “jails exist for a reason” and that mandatory minimums “only exist for violent crimes.”

Lang called for more “judicial discretion” in the sentencing process, to which Aboushi pushed back, saying that “guardrails” were necessary to ensure that judges did not impose overly punitive sentences. Marton promised not to seek sentences longer than 20 years, except under extraordinary circumstances. Marton has also pledged to reduce Manhattan’s prison population by 80% during his tenure.

“I’m running for district attorney against some very good lawyers who would all make a better district attorney than Cy Vance,” Quart said at one point during the forum, an acknowledgement that many of the candidates running had similarly-progressive answers to most questions asked Tuesday night.

With his 80% decarceration goal and other proposals, Marton has tried to establish himself as the furthest left, most radical candidate in the race, while Quart repeatedly pointed to his legislative record as evidence of his own progressive bona fides, as well as his calls for Vance and Police Commissioner Dermot Shea to resign. Bragg, the lone Black candidate in the race, often cites his lived and prosecutorial experiences as reasons that he would make an effective DA. Similarly, Aboushi noted that she would be the first woman and person of color to hold the position. Other candidates, notably Crotty, dissented from the consensus progressive stances on issues like mandatory minimums and cautioned against defunding the NYPD budget.

Each candidate was asked to fill out a lengthier questionnaire and return it to the club before they make their endorsement in the race before petitioning starts for the primary.

City Hall (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)

August 19, 2020 - Max & Murphy Podcast: Lessons from the 2020 Primaries & What to Watch for in 2021, with Dr. Christina Greer

Dr. Christina Greer, Fordham political science professor and co-host of the FAQNYC podcast, joined the show to discuss takeaways from the 2020 primaries, the battle raging within the Democratic Party, insights into Black voting patterns, and what might matter as we look ahead to the 2021 mayoral race.

Listen to the conversation and let us know what you think -- we're on Twitter @TweetBenMax and @JarrettMurphy. You can listen to the show through the embedded audio below or download the episode wherever you get your podcasts, under "Max & Murphy," and listen to Max & Murphy live on Wednesdays at 5 p.m. on WBAI radio, 99.5FM or wbai.org.

An image from a Malliotakis attack ad

It’s been clear for quite some time that the race between Democratic Congressional Rep. Max Rose and his Republican challenger, Assemblymember Nicole Malliotakis, would be highly competitive and full of mud-slinging. The campaign in New York’s 11th Congressional District, spanning all of Staten Island and a slice of Southern Brooklyn, is among the most-watched nationally, and the attack ads have been flying for months.

Now with under three months until Election Day, the Rose and Malliotakis campaigns both recently released negative ads that stretch the truth — though the challenger’s is significantly more misleading than the incumbent’s.

Rose, an Army veteran who is still part of the National Guard, was able to flip the seat in 2018, winning 50% of the vote against incumbent Dan Donovan’s 46%. The Democratic win was among several red-to-blue flips in New York, which contributed to the party’s seizure of the House majority. It also ensured that New York City had an all-Democratic congressional delegation.

Malliotakis, who represents a significantly overlapping district in the State Legislature and was the Republican nominee for  mayor in 2017, now hopes to flip the seat back. Rose’s successful 2018 approach was based on a moderate brand of Democratic politics, focusing on less partisan issues like infrastructure, criticizing de Blasio, and mostly avoiding the often polarizing topic of President Donald Trump, who carried the district and won Staten Island overwhelmingly in 2016, though Rose did eventually vote for Trump’s impeachment.

But you wouldn’t know that Rose has staked out a moderate, law enforcement-friendly path after seeing Malliotakis’ recent ad titled, “Thin Blue Line,” which groups Rose in with de Blasio — who the Congressmember has recently called “not only the worst mayor in the history of New York City, he’s the worst mayor in the history of this great country” — and, despite evidence to the contrary, says Rose’s positions on the New York Police Department “aren’t just radically liberal…they’re radically dangerous.”

Rose’s own ad, “When the Virus Hit,” goes after Malliotakis for her actions related to the coronavirus pandemic, although points of criticism it raises are on policies or votes shared with her Democratic colleagues in the Assembly.

“Thin Blue Line”

In her ad, Malliotakis says that Rose “joined de Blasio and the defund the police crowd” in “calling to dismantle the NYPD,” referencing the “defund the NYPD” protest movement spurred by the police killing of George Floyd in Minnesota, which calls for resources to be redistributed from the NYPD to youth and social services.

But Rose has made multiple public comments stating that he does not support the “defund the NYPD” movement. In early June, Rose tweeted “I don’t support defunding or abolishing the NYPD,” while criticizing Republicans for their role in not funding police. A month later, Rose wrote an op-ed in the Staten Island Advance titled, “Defunding the police is shortsighted and wrong,” in which he said, “I oppose #DefundThePolice and spoke out against efforts to cut funding to our District Attorney’s office because doing so will undermine the most critical goal of the moment: to build a city and country where relationships between law enforcement and the communities they serve are based on trust and mutual respect.”

Rose serves on the Committee on Homeland Security and Committee on Veteran’s Affairs in Congress, and has worked to increase Homeland Security funding for New York and co-sponsored a bill to increase mental health programs for law enforcement.

When asked why Malliotakis’ ad suggested Rose supports defunding the NYPD, a spokesperson for Malliotakis’ campaign pointed to his attendance of a peaceful Black Lives Matter march where some protestors held “defund NYPD” and other signs as evidence of his support for the movement.

“On issue after issue Max Rose tries to play both sides,” Malliotakis’ spokesperson, Rob Ryan, said. “He takes part in an anti-NYPD demonstration where his fellow marchers chant ‘defund the police’ and carry signs saying ‘Blue Lives Murder” and then he claims he supports the NYPD; he can’t have it both ways.”

Rose previously responded to Malliotakis in a tweet by alleging she was insincere in her remarks for criticizing his attendance of the march despite having expressed support of recent peaceful demonstrations in Bay Ridge and Staten Island in her own tweet two days prior. Meanwhile, Malliotakis attended a pro-NYPD rally at which demonstrators used sexist, misogynistic language against Black Lives Matter supporters, something Rose condemned in a statement the next day.

In her ad, Malliotakis also said Rose had joined calls to “end cash bail.” Rose voiced support for bail reform generally in a 2018 Lambda Independent Democrats of Brooklyn candidate questionnaire, which cited a proposal by Governor Andrew Cuomo that included legislation to “Eliminate monetary bail for people facing misdemeanor and non-violent felony charges.”

However, when New York State’s initial bail reform laws passed in 2019, Rose joined Republicans and some Democrats, including de Blasio, in criticizing them and said the reforms “went too far, too fast.” He also called for changes to prevent major drug dealers from being released along with Special Narcotics Prosecutor Bridget Brennan and Staten Island District Attorney Michael McMahon.

"Unlike Nicole Malliotakis, I know what it means to risk everything to keep this country and those I love safe,” Rose said in a statement to the Gotham Gazette. “That's why I opposed defunding the police, secured millions of dollars for the NYPD to keep NYC safe from terrorists, and have taken on my party no matter the consequences. Nicole lies as if her very life depends on it and flip flopped on everything from support to President Trump, to sanctuary cities, and even the Black Lives Matter protests. After this election, hopefully she'll finally understand you can't lie to the people you're trying to lead."

Rose was referring to how Malliotakis previously said she “was never really a supporter of his” in reference to Trump and had tried to distance herself from him while running for mayor in 2017, as well as how she voiced support in 2017 for a type of sanctuary city policy put in place by former Mayor Ed Koch but in January 2019 wrote an op-ed saying New York should no longer be a sanctuary city.

“When the Virus Hit”

Rose’s ad focuses on the pandemic and Malliotakis’ response as a member of the State Assembly, where she is in the minority. The ad mentions three main points: that Malliotakis photoshopped herself into a picture to make it appear as if she were providing covid-related relief to New Yorkers, that she voted to cut hospitals funding by $400 million; and that she voted for a law that “protects shady nursing homes that put seniors at risk,” as the ad says.

Although it is true that Malliotakis was photoshopped into a picture in early April as part of an Instagram post that said she was delivering PPE and other supplies to nursing homes, sanitation workers, and first responders, the photoshopping was done by the Brooklyn Conservative Party, which posted the image. Her campaign noted that although the particular photo was not genuine, Malliotakis had done a significant amount of work to distribute PPE and help her constituents in other ways during the pandemic.

The two other allegations made in the ad are also broadly correct — Malliotakis did vote to cut hospital funding and pass a law that protects nursing homes from litigation, but those votes were part of the State budget that passed in late March. For it to pass, many Assembly members — mostly Democrats — voted in favor of the same motions, even though many later said they were unhappy with the end result, rammed through by Governor Cuomo while legislators argued the budget needed to be passed to prevent a government shutdown or delay in services or aid to New Yorkers.

“The real fraud in this race is Max Rose; he cynically attacks Assemblywoman Malliotakis on issues that were part of the state budget process, all the time knowing that the vast majority of legislators voted the same way including his Democrat colleagues,” Ryan said in a statement. “It’s another example of how he twists the truth.”

New. Yorkers seeking help (photo: Edwin J. Torres/Mayor's Office)

As a new report indicates unemployment in New York City may be as high as 33%, the state’s labor commissioner testified at a Thursday legislative hearing that since early March, the New York Department of Labor (DOL) has paid almost $40 billion in unemployment benefits to more than 3.3 million New Yorkers, compared to $2.1 billion in all of 2019.

The impact of the COVID-19 outbreak and its fallout on the state’s workforce was the subject of an oversight hearing held by both houses of the State Legislature Thursday.

Key discussion points included the DOL’s struggles to meet the staggering needs of so many suddenly unemployed New Yorkers as the economy was abruptly shut down to slow the virus’ spread; the failures on the federal level to provide sufficient aid and guidance in the wake of unprecedented unemployment; actions New York state government could take to address workplace safety, worker’s compensation, the plights of gig economy and undocumented workers, and other issues.

According to the DOL, the ongoing COVID-19 crisis resulted in 15.7% unemployment across the state, and 20.4% In New York City as of June. The real unemployment situation among New Yorkers is likely even worse, though, with a report from The New School’s Center for New York Affairs finding that the percent of the pre-pandemic workforce receiving unemployment benefits is closer to 27.6% for the state and a staggering 32.7%, just about one-third, for the city in June.

That report also found that in the months of June and July, when the city began reopening, 50,000 workers a week lost their jobs, “a pace of initial unemployment claims four times higher than during the worst of the 2008-09 Great Recession,” according to the report, written by James Parrott and Lina Moe. And although the current economic downturn is often compared to the Great Recession, it comes with unique challenges not present a decade ago, as even while people return to work and businesses reopen, they must take precautions to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and workers, especially those in vulnerable populations, must consider the risk of contracting the virus when deciding whether or not to return to the workforce. Not to mention the fact that certain industries, like film and entertainment, may not be able to reopen at all due to social distancing restrictions.

Making matters worse, according to DOL Commissioner Roberta Reardon at Thursday’s hearing, the federal government has provided insufficient resources and been unhelpful in providing guidance on how to implement some of the few programs it has created to address the crisis.

Reardon said that of the nearly $40 billion the state has allocated in unemployment benefits, about three quarters is federal money, including some stemming from the $600 weekly unemployment supplement granted through the federal CARES Act, which expired at the end of July. Some of the other 25% came from the State’s Unemployment Insurance trust fund created after the Great Recession, which had about $2.7 billion at the start of 2020, according to the U.S. Department of Labor — although New York still needed to take out a $5 billion interest-free federal loan to meet the need, Reardon said.

Reardon added that if there is not an influx of federal funds the state will likely have to take out a larger loan, although there is hope that some of the loan will be forgiven by the federal government. She said other states are in a similar position due to the pandemic.

“I can say that if we had to pay an extra $100 for every claimant, currently, between now and the end of December it would be something like $4-plus billion in cost to New York State, it would be completely intolerable, we couldn’t do it,” Reardon said, referring to a proposal put forth by President Trump that includes a state match to new federal unemployment money.

Although talks of another stimulus bill were taking place on Capitol Hill, recent reports have suggested it is unlikely another relief bill will be passed soon and, instead, Trump is attempting action through executive orders. While Democrats who control the House of Representatives passed another enormous relief bill in mid-May, Republicans who control the Senate dismissed it and have put forward a sketch of their own proposal, leaving the two sides at an impasse thus far and Trump unwilling or unable to broker a deal.

Given that New York has thus far been the hardest hit state by the pandemic and has been more cautious than other states in its economic reopening, the state could be in significant trouble if no additional federal aid shows up (the governor and other state and local officials are also lobbying for tens of billions of dollars in federal funding to plug tax revenue gaps). New York “had the second-sharpest February-to-June payroll job loss of any state, and its official June unemployment rate was third-highest among all states,” the New School report says.

But a lack of funding was only one issue Reardon mentioned with the federal government’s response. She also highlighted speed, which affected New York’s ability to give out aid, as it was not until after the CARES Act was passed in late March that programs such as the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program — which provides aid to those experiencing loss of work due to covid who weren’t covered by normal unemployment — were created, and even then the state “did not get federal guidance on how to administer it, which meant we couldn’t do anything, until April 5,” Reardon said.

PUA essentially expanded unemployment assistance to self-employed, freelance, or gig workers, as well as those who are not working due to concerns around covid, although in the latter case there has to be additional substance to their fear such as a medical condition, elderly loved one they live with, or something along those lines.

When PUA was initially rolled out, there was some confusion as to how to get it, something Queens State Senator John Liu brought up during the hearing. Reardon said this was because “originally the federal government had a regulation that said they had to apply for unemployment, be denied and then apply for PUA. People thought that they were denied for benefits,” an extra step that was removed on April 20.

This was among the challenges New Yorkers faced in trying to access unemployment insurance during the current crisis, with almost every State Senator and Assembly member who attended Thursday’s hearing citing the work they put in to help constituents who faced extensive problems filing for and receiving unemployment. Reardon defended DOL’s response, saying New York moved “faster and more aggressively” than any other state and that, currently, there is no backlog on unemployment claims besides the normal one-to-three-week period it takes to process them and those that are involved in litigation.

With DOL’s call center receiving over 8.2 million calls in one week at the height of the pandemic, compared to an average of 60,000 pre-covid, Reardon noted DOL’s work to address the crush, which brought its systems down, by building and launching an unemployment application in partnership with Google on April 10, increasing DOL representatives to over 7,000 people — many from other state agencies — at the peak, and creating a chatbot to help during the application process. Reardon said that during the pandemic it was like DOL “rebuilt the plane while flying it,” when it comes to unemployment claims, and that the agency has been using data gained during the time to add to their existing work on a new unemployment system that is still yet to be implemented.

As DOL scales down to about 4,500 representatives and as New York faces new challenges in reopening the economy and schools, that new system is a focus, Reardon said.

Meanwhile, Labor Bureau Chief Karen Cacace at the state Attorney General’s office added another key issue with the state’s reopening: a lack of safety guidelines for reopening businesses by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which creates and enforces rules about workplace safety for private industries.

“Regarding safety standards, because OSHA has failed to create standards to protect workers from COVID-19 specifically, and airborne illnesses generally, the state can and should create specific, enforceable standards for all industries,” Cacace said at Thursday’s hearing. “It is imperative that employers be required to provide safe working conditions for their employees. This is true at any time, but particularly during this pandemic.”

Cacace suggested the State Legislature pass a bill that outlines clear safety regulations.

“Legislation really would be important to address the pandemic going forward,” she said. “As we all know, as people are going to be back to work, there are more and more concerns about what is a safe workplace. And I think there is room for the State Legislature to fill the void that the federal government has left and to create those safety standards so that we’ll be able to enforce them.”

President of the New York State AFL-CIO Mario Cilento, who also provided testimony at the hearing, said in addition to passing legislation to establish safety standards in the private sector, the punishment for not adhering to safety plans should be significant.

“We all know that countless workers continue to risk their lives and their physical well-being to serve all of us, and they deal with the mental toll because they’re constantly worried about the continued risk of getting sick on the job and they’re constantly questioning the safety plans or the inadequate adherence to those plans,” Cilento said. “Fines for inadequate safety plans and adherence to those plans must be steep.”

“I’m afraid that people will be afraid to put a complaint in if they have to provide any type of information, such as their name,” said Long Island State Senator Monica Martinez.

This fear may be justified, as Cacace said the Attorney General’s office has received many inquiries, “Most concerning to our office, allegations of retaliation against workers who complain about unsafe working conditions in workplaces that remain open.”

Brooklyn Assemblymember Jo Anne Simon mentioned that there are currently two bills that would address this issue and expand the definition of retaliation in current whistleblower laws to better protect employees.

The New School report also says state action is needed to ensure those who are forced to work in unsafe conditions can take action in other ways, stating, “state law needs to be clarified to allow workers to refuse offers to return to work and retain their UI benefits where the worker is justifiably concerned of serious health risks. Several states are extending such protections to older workers and others with health conditions that put them at high-risk.”

Although DOL does not share a complainant’s information with their employer, many legislators at Thursday’s hearing expressed concerns about employees fearing retaliation if they report dangerous conditions.

What happens when an employee does contract COVID-19, no matter the precautions taken in the workplace, was another somewhat vexing topic at the hearing. Cilento said he sees an issue in the fact that, currently, the worker must be able to prove they contracted the disease through their work in order to qualify for workers’ compensation.

“If you’re working at a grocery store and you’re working at the checkout counter, in the course of an eight-hour day you might see 200 or 300 customers come by your lane. If you are a nurse and you are seeing a couple of hundred patients…right now, you would have to point out which particular customer who came by on that line in that grocery store, that supermarket, gave you the virus,” Cilento said. “What we are saying is there should be a presumption that if you are in that line of work, if you are in that situation, that if you contracted the virus you contracted it at work.”

Such a change to the law would still leave the option for an employer to dispute said assumption throughout the workers' compensation hearing process.

Assemblymember Brian Manktelow of Wayne County expressed concerns about such a change, saying, “You got to think about the employer as well, because I want these jobs to stay here, we need the jobs, we need the employers to do this. So, how does that work, how do we know that individual didn’t get it on the way in on the bus?”

Queens State Senator Jessica Ramos, a co-chair of the hearing as the Senate labor committee chair, repeatedly highlighted the need to better serve communities of color, including those who don't speak English as their first language and undocumented workers. She noted that individuals "still can't actually apply for PUA in Spanish, let alone other languages," and that, instead, they "need to call to receive language access and yet people haven't heard from" DOL in months. Given that undocumented workers are not eligible for unemployment benefits, their struggles were mentioned by a number of Democratic lawmakers. Sanders asked if there was any way for the New York Attorney General to sue for undocumented workers, saying their needs are "by and large not being met in this economy, and that's so dangerous." Cacace said the office could represent them in cases involving any labor laws aside from unemployment, which does not cover them, something she acknowledged is "an enormous gap." Sanders asked the office to continue to look for other ways the state could assist undocumented workers.

Additional legislation that may put strain on employers, but also help employees, was discussed: expanding partial unemployment insurance, which provides assistance to those who are working but have gotten their hours significantly reduced.

Cacace said the way partial UI works currently is confusing for employees and DOL, and mentioned that if you work even one hour on a day, you are disqualified from receiving benefits for that day, even if you aren’t paid for that work because, say, you are self-employed.

“There’s a much simpler way, is just to actually subtract the amount of wages that you earn,” Cacace said, explaining that wages could simply be taken out of an individual’s current unemployment benefits.

The New School report also highlights partial UI, recommending, “New York should modify its partial UI system to increase the number of part-time hours that a UI recipient can work without jeopardizing the receipt of all benefits.”

The group of legislators also honed in on a specific area of part-time workers, those who work in the gig economy, such as Uber and Lyft drivers. For years, these workers have attempted to gain recognition as employees rather than contractors, to be able to gain benefits such as health care, unemployment, retirement funds, and others. A major step toward that goal was made when a New York judge ruled in late March that Postmates drivers are, in fact, employees.

“State administrative agencies and the courts have begun to reaffirm what we all know: these workers are employees,” Cilento said. “The pandemic has highlighted the disparities between the rights of gig workers and employees and if there ever was a time for the Legislature to pass a comprehensive law to protect these workers, it is now.”

Cilento said app companies should be compelled by the state to contribute to the unemployment insurance trust fund, like other employers are required to do, with the amount based on the number of workers they employ and their hours.

Such a move could increase the amount of unemployment funds the state has to distribute, something Queens State Senator James Sanders said New York generally has to look to do with federal funding running out.

“I have no idea why anybody was looking to the White House for aid to the states and cities, I have absolutely no idea, there’s no history of this. And why anybody thought we would get anything from that, I have no idea,” Sanders said at the hearing.

He went on to question some reluctance from New York state officials, most notably Governor Andrew Cuomo (although he did not name him) to instituting a new tax on the wealthy, “Why is there a hesitation in some of the upper realms of New York State government in dealing with…any of the 1% taxes?” Sanders said.

“I am very concerned about the lack of federal money, and I’m so happy that our leaders Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Carl Heastie have come together to say that we need to raise revenue in order to save jobs and maintain the status for people to survive the pandemic,” said Manhattan State Senator Robert Jackson, noting a projected 20% state cut to education, healthcare, municipality, and agency funding.

Cilento voiced support for any methods of raising funds, and noted that proposed cuts to services would disproportionately hurt low-wage workers already struggling due to the economic effects of the pandemic. He said investing in infrastructure, including renewable energy products, could create jobs and that legalizing adult use of marijuana could also “can bring in a new industry with solid wages for workers that could be invested right back into local economies.”

Looking at what is likely to be a long road back to a healthy economy, legislators like Assemblymember Thomas Abinanti made similar suggestions.

“We have seen so many people lose their jobs, we have seen so many sectors of the economy that have been badly damaged, and we may be losing them permanently, or at least it’s going to be a long time before they come back,” Abinanti said. “So, we need to find a way to restore parts of our economy or substitute new ones. We need to find ways to support the green economy and move towards sustainable jobs that are not going to damage the environment and which are going to be there if there’s a second round of covid.”

He went on to ask if the minimum wage needed to be increased, perhaps, as State Senator George Borrello previously brought up the notion that increased unemployment benefits at times resulted in people making more money than when they were working, something Borrello said was a problem for already struggling small businesses that could not provide wages that compete with unemployment benefits. Abinanti said, in that case, raising the minimum wage may solve the issue of some workers making more on unemployment.

Whether it be raising the minimum wage, instituting higher taxes on the wealthy, or something else, if no action is taken legislators seem to predict a bleak outlook for low-wage workers and low-income New Yorkers as the economic impact of the pandemic rages on.

“I’m just scared that the essential workers today will become the furloughed and fired workers tomorrow,” Sanders said.

The 5 NYC-DSA-backed candidates for State Legislature, including guests Brisport (center) & Salazar (right)

August 12, 2020 - Max & Murphy Podcast: Democratic Socialists Ascendant, with Senator Julia Salazar & Jabari Brisport

State Senator Julia Salazar & likely State Senator Jabari Brisport, both Brooklyn Democrats backed by the New York City-Democratic Socialists of America, joined the show to discuss their ideas for helping New York recover from the many coronavirus-related crises, whether the state should raise taxes on the wealthy, and what the NYC-DSA movement is all about.

Listen to the conversation and let us know what you think -- we're on Twitter @TweetBenMax and @JarrettMurphy. You can listen to the show through the embedded audio below or download the episode wherever you get your podcasts, under "Max & Murphy," and listen to Max & Murphy live on Wednesdays at 5 p.m. on WBAI radio, 99.5FM or wbai.org.

State Senator Myrie in the Senate chamber (photo: State Senate)

After June saw drastic shifts in how voting in New York is conducted, elections administrators, state legislators, and watchdogs have a long list of changes they want to see enacted before the general election this fall. But above all they want clarity from Governor Andrew Cuomo.

Many of the key players in New York City and State elections testified Tuesday at an oversight hearing held by both houses of the Democrat-controlled Legislature examining the June primary, its successes and failures, and solutions for a safe and efficient general election.

"For many New Yorkers...democracy was functional," said State Senator Zellnor Myrie, a Brooklyn Democrat and chair of the Senate elections committee, in his opening remarks at the hearing. "But too many New Yorkers saw their democracy fail them during this pandemic."

"This hearing today is about finding solutions for the voters of the State of New York," Myrie said.

As their remarks showed, administrators are looking at a logistical nightmare unfolding at the feet of a notoriously antiquated and byzantine elections system, which typically conducts 95 percent of voting in person, during a pandemic and with the anticipation of record-breaking turnout.

"We have run elections in times of turmoil," said State Board of Elections (SBOE) co-executive director Robert Brehm, in his testimony Tuesday. "In my lifetime, we've had natural disasters...We've had Hurricanes Irene, Lee, and Sandy on the cusp of elections. And public safety issues -- September 11th is certainly a date that impacted elections."

"But the COVID-19 pandemic has turned out to be longer, more sustained, and much more complicated a world crisis than any of those," he added.

As the coronavirus outbreak unfolded in New York, elections administrators throughout the state contended with a host of issues leading up to the June primaries. Facing a dramatic increase in absentee voting because of the governor's executive order extending eligibility, they still had to ensure that poll sites were safely run as more than half of voters still cast ballots in person.

In New York State, 1,027,234 voters cast a ballot in person on primary day, June 23, and 731,131 voted absentee (38 percent), according to testimony provided by the State Board of Elections. Another 118,108 New Yorkers voted in person during the early voting period, fewer than half the roughly 256,000 voters who did in 2019, despite there being 17 more early voting poll sites.

With over half of voters opting to vote in person in June and the surge in turnout expected for the general election, which will include the presidential race, elections commissioners throughout the state are looking for ways to ensure proper staffing amidst a pandemic that is keeping people home -- especially older New Yorkers who make up a bulk of the state's poll workers.

The additional bureaucratic hurdles of shifting to a more mail-oriented election system -- including the sudden prominence of the U.S. Postal Service, which is beyond the authority of state regulators -- meant tens of thousands of ballots were thrown out on technical grounds and thousands more were sent out late by the New York City Board of Elections or never got delivered.

Yet despite recognizing a host of repeat and new challenges for the general election, the executive orders that altered the primaries have all expired, and election administrators are proceeding as though its business as usual as the clock ticks.

"Presently we're running this November election based on the laws we have on the book," Brehm told the committees. "I believe some [recently passed bills] have gone to the governor last night, but they are not in place yet."

"So we're basing our planning on the laws we have on the books and certainly we will have to adapt as much as we can for what comes our way," he said. Early voting for the general election is just over two months away, and preparations for mailing millions of absentee ballot applications and ballots must begin relatively soon to be executed well.

Cuomo has yet to sign legislation or orders that would expand absentee eligibility again, or proposals that could help voters but also place additional burdens on the state and county boards of elections, like one that would require local boards to notify a voter when their ballot is rejected and offer a way to remedy it.

"The Legislature already passed a bill that is awaiting signature by the governor giving voters the right to cure defects," said SBOE Co-Chair Douglas Kellner. "That will create more work for the boards of elections but will reduce the number of ballots that are invalidated for inadvertent reasons."

There’s a long list of voting and election reform bills that have either passed both houses of the Legislature and await gubernatorial action; have passed one house and await action in the other; or have been introduced but not yet moved in either the Assembly or the State Senate.

Invalidating Ballots
The main reason more than 80,000 absentee ballots were invalidated in New York City alone, according to Kellner, was because of a missing signature. While lawmakers and advocates are pushing for the ballot curing bill to be signed into law, Kellner said the SBOE is also looking into ways to redesign the ballot envelope to ensure that voters provide the required signature, which they say is the only method they have of seeing that the right person cast a particular ballot.

Envelopes missing postmarks was another key reason absentee ballots were thrown out. But the USPS did not testify in person at Tuesday's hearing, held jointly by the elections committees and local governments committees of the Senate and Assembly, leaving a number of unanswered questions about whether postmarking would be a problem in the general election.

"There was consultation [with the USPS] on that," Kellner told lawmakers.

"The postal service guidelines and procedures require postmarking for election materials and the odds of not getting a postmark are just as great if you put a stamp on an envelope as they are by using the pre-paid postage system," he said, referring to reports that the missing postmarks were an error caused by the state's use of pre-paid envelopes.

Ballot Logistics
One of the biggest logistical issues boards of elections face is that law sets the deadline to apply for an absentee ballot at seven days before the election, which leaves very little time to process them and send a ballot, much less have the voter then return the ballot in time to be counted. USPS guidelines released in July advise states to leave a 15-day window for election mail, Kellner said. With the anticipation of a high volume of absentee ballot applications, the SBOE is seeking a 15-day deadline to apply before Election Day, which is November 3 this year.

"I think there is agreement that the current timeframe is unrealistic and has led to some of the disenfranchisement that we've seen this year," said SBOE Co-Chair Peter Kosinski.

Michael Ryan, executive director of the New York City Board of Elections, the state's largest election jurisdiction, told lawmakers Tuesday that he agreed with the need to adjust the timeline. "To be clear, the present calendar didn't work under regular circumstances, when we just had the normal number of absentee ballot applications," Ryan said. "Now you have a twelve-fold increase, it becomes an impossibility."

In New York City, about 53 percent of the applications for absentee ballots came through the city's newly-established online portal, Ryan said.

Jennifer Wilson, deputy director of the League of Women Voters of New York State, urged the Legislature to provide funding to county boards "so that all voters can be sent an absentee ballot application form, and that both the request form and absentee ballot return envelopes include pre-paid postage."

Additional costs include staffing at poll sites and messaging to promote early voting, which was expanded in June but under-utilized. PPE and additional poll-site precautions to mitigate the transmission of COVID-19 are likely to be other significant expenses. County boards are also exploring new technologies to sort and canvass votes. For instance, last week, the New York City Board of Elections approved the purchase of five mail-ballot sorting and scanning machines, at the cost of roughly $1.5 million.

With the primary results taking six weeks to fully count and certify, many are also worried about how long it could be before the general election results are tabulated.

County boards are exploring staffing increases and new technologies to sort and canvass votes. For instance, the new machines the city BOE ordered are capable of sorting up to 15,000 ballots per hour.

Funding
Funding is another big source of uncertainty ahead of the general election.

The federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act allocated $400 million to states for elections, with states required to provide a 20 percent match. New York State received roughly $20.5 million in CARES Act funding and state lawmakers allocated an additional $4.1 million to local election boards, according to the SBOE. Of the total available, county boards have already spent $12 million -- roughly half -- with three country boards having spent all of their additional funding. A majority of that spending went towards the postage on pre-paid absentee ballot envelopes, according to the SBOE.

A typical election in New York State costs roughly $25 million. But with precautions and extenuating provisions being made around the coronavirus pandemic the costs this year are much higher.

SBOE Co-Executive Director Todd Valentine said with 6 to 7 million pieces of mail sent out for the primaries, when Cuomo’s executive order required election material be sent with pre-paid return envelopes. With the possibility of mailing postage-paid absentee ballot applications in the general election to roughly 12.6 million registered voters statewide, the state is looking at a $26 million price tag just for absentee ballot applications, according to Valentine's estimate.

"We've certainly asked the governor's office whether they had any intentions repeatedly…of making those changes," he said, referring to a possible requirement to mail absentee ballot applications to every registered voter. "They have not given us an answer."

Charles, left, & Inez Barron, right, at a ceremony with the Mayor & others (photo: John McCarten/City Council)

Anything short of a revolution won’t satisfy Charles and Inez Barron, the married Brooklynites who hold seats in the State Assembly and City Council, respectively, and the police reforms and city budget passed in the wake of recent widespread Black Lives Matter protests serve merely as a distraction to their radical idea of Black-led politics. 

Assemblymember Charles Barron and City Council Member Inez Barron, both Democrats, have a combined 30 years in city and state elected office, and many more in activism. They are two Black elected officials with a long history of fighting racism and representing majority-Black neighborhoods like East New York, East Flatbush, and Canarsie, and they are eyeing the current moment as a new opportunity in their campaign against oppression and vision for a new political party. 

“My biggest goal right now, and has been for the last couple of decades, is to build a powerful, independent, Black, radical political movement for the liberation of Black people in communities where we constitute the majority,” said Charles Barron, once a member of the Black Panther Party and now representing the 60th Assembly District encompassing East New York.

For the Barrons, who’ve been civil rights activists for decades whether in or out of elected office, the recent Black Lives Matter protests spurred by police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other Black people, as well as the city and state government response, are seen in a long, historical context. And, they say, the heated political debates the protests catalyzed in New York still amounted to tinkering at the margins, not properly reinventing a racist society.

While they ignited protests across the country, those recent deaths hit New York nerves still raw from past deaths of unarmed Black people at the hands of police, especially the killing of Eric Garner in 2014, and ongoing complaints of excessive force and disproportionate enforcement by race by the NYPD. The massive wave of protests prompted city and state politicians to pass a very long list of idled police reform bills, as well as a New York City budget that became focused around calls by activists and some elected officials to “defund the police.”

Though many New Yorkers saw the recent sweep of city and state legislation -- which included outlawing police chokeholds, codifying the New York Attorney General as special prosecutor in certain cases of civilian deaths at the hands of police, and much more -- as either too much or major victories in the fight against injustice, the Barrons said the reforms (and the new city budget) fell far short of what they believe is required.

“That is a very pathetic response,” said Charles Barron. “I supported all of it, the activists, the advocates wanted it, the families that were harmed and lost loved ones wanted it. I supported it. But it was a bunch of bogus legislation that was around for years.”

Whether it’s the state budget in Albany or the New York City budget at City Hall, the Barrons -- who swapped seats in 2013/2014 and may do so again in 2021/2022 -- are often among the “no” votes even as most of their fellow Democrats vote “yes.” In separate interviews with Gotham Gazette, Charles and Inez Barron emphasized their own ideas for increasing public safety, like dismantling current models of policing, involving the community in adding or removing officers, establishing a truly independent prosecutor for when police kill unarmed civilians (since they view New York Attorney General Letitia James as not independent enough), abolishing prisons, and increasing Cure Violence programs.

Inez Barron also said she plans to introduce new legislation aimed at replacing the Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB), a police oversight agency, with an elected body that reviews NYPD misconduct.

The Barrons also described what they call their own Black-led radical political movement, which they currently run through a nonprofit grassroots advocacy organization they founded called Operation P.O.W.E.R, or People Organizing and Working for Empowerment and Respect, and how they eventually want to grow it to a political party that supports Black people running for office.

Inez Barron said the couple’s future political plans remain uncertain as her time in the Council ends at the end of next year due to term limits. There are no term limits in the State Assembly, however, and Council members are allowed more than two terms if they run again after a break, so the possibility of another Barron seat swap remains. While it’s possible Charles Barron may run for City Council and Inez Barron for Assembly again, Inez Barron said elevating youth to positions of power is a priority for her and her husband. 

“Well, that’s an interesting idea and we don’t see it as ‘switched,’ because it certainly was not a musical chairs kind of thing, the people voted and we were elected to those positions and we’re very pleased to see that the community appreciates and recognizes our service and wants us to represent them,” said Inez, who represents the 42nd City Council District, which includes East New York, Brownsville, Canarsie, East Flatbush, Spring Creek, and Starrett City. “So what the future holds, I don’t know, my term as you say does end until December of 2021. And we work from a collaborative, a co-operative group Operation P.O.W.E.R. and the decisions about people and positions and elections and campaigns is in fact made collectively, those decisions are made collectively, so we have not in fact made those decisions.”

“We do have several young people that we are grooming and training and making sure they understand the intricacies of how things work,” Inez Barron continued. “And we are preparing them to step into those positions and represent the people.”

History of Activism
According to the biography on his website, Charles Barron joined the Harlem chapter of the Black Panther Party before founding the branch of the National Black United Front, or NBUF, in the same neighborhood. The chairperson at the time made him chief of staff of NBUF and also secretary general of the African Peoples Christian Organization, or APCO. 

Charles Barron touts efforts to bring truly affordable housing to the areas he’s represented in the Council and Assembly, and securing millions of dollars in funding for CUNY’s Black Male Initiative.

Inez Barron has highlighted a long history of fighting segregation and discrimination, excluding Africa from school curriculum, police misconduct, and environmental racism. Before being elected to the City Council, Barron authored legislation in the Assembly to preserve affordable housing in Spring Creek and Starrett City. Before being elected to the Assembly in 2008, Barron was a public school teacher for more than three decades.

Operation P.O.W.E.R. and a Public Safety Vision
Inez and Charles Barron offer a similar vision of the community taking control of public safety. Charles said he wants to see the police department, in its current state, dismantled, and for the community to lead in the hiring and firing of police in their neighborhoods. He stressed the importance of having more social workers involved in intervention. The Assembly member also said he wants to abolish the prison system as it exists today and find alternative solutions for people who are mentally challenged or display antisocial behavior. 

Both Barrons emphasized preventative measures in public safety. Charles pointed to poverty as the root of crime and that unemployment causes mental distress. Inez praised Cure Violence programs, which take an evidence-based, public health approach to stop the spread of violence through conflict-resolution by authentic messengers, engagement with high-risk individuals, and community mobilization. Inez said nonprofit Man Up! works in her Council district to promote peace in communities, and its work has contributed to the relatively lower increase in gun violence in her district compared to others, who have seen a proportionally larger uptick. The BK Reader recently reported the relatively high shooting numbers in East New York are on par with similar numbers from last year, a stark contrast to other neighborhoods that have experienced spikes.

As for the implementation of their vision, the Barrons said they have been building their Black-led, radical movement for years. Working through Operation P.O.W.E.R., they foresee building a Black-led political party because, as Charles Barron said, the Democratic Party does not fit their vision of Black liberation. The Barrons formed their organization with specific goals in mind, including self-determination, community control of organizations and governmental agencies embedded in the community, land trusts, and worker cooperatives to combat a capitalist society, according to Inez Barron. 

Charles Barron said their tactic right now is to use the Democratic Party as a way to win elections until they build a separate party. He disparaged other Black elected officials who he said let their neighborhoods gentrify, saying many of them fall to political ambition or party loyalty. The Assembly member also said political organizations like the New King Democrats or the Democratic Socialists of America or parties like the Working Families Party are not matches for the movement the Barrons spearhead.

“Any Black person looking for liberation, these groups are not viable options,” said Charles Barron. “They’re using us to maintain the status quo. They’re not trying to really change any system of capitalist oppression, they’re trying to reform things and some are just opportunists for themselves.”

Next year, Inez’s time in the Council expires. When Charles, who held her seat before her,   reached his consecutive term limit, East New Yorkers voted him into the Assembly seat while Inez ran for City Council. That may be a possibility again, but Operation P.O.W.E.R. will reach a decision on who it wants to support in elections towards the end of this year, according to Inez Barron. She said they have also mentored young people in East New York who they want to help boost into office, though she did not name any names. 

“All that’s represented by my Council district are the areas in which we’re looking to make sure we can have strong, radical, independent, decision-making people in those positions,” said Inez Barron. “If you grow too quickly and if you don’t have other areas that adhere to what you say are the principles of your organization it can morph into something that you did not intend.”

The Barrons tend to differentiate the movement they are building as more radical and revolutionary from the one New Yorkers have recently seen a resurgence of in the streets. Charles Barron advised Black Lives Matter advocates to move from the symptoms of racism to root causes. 

“There’s a difference between organizing and mobilizing for power,” said Charles Barron. “When you mobilize people around issues like police brutality or some other kinds of issues, you don’t get any power doing that. You’re just responding to issues and they placate you with some empty reform.”

State Police Reform
On the state level, reforms included the Eric Garner Chokehold Act that criminalizes police using chokeholds when it leads to serious injury or death; the repeal of 50-A, which kept law enforcement officers’ disciplinary records from the public eye; the appointment of the Attorney General as a special prosecutor when police kill an unarmed civilian; the “Amy Cooper” bill that makes false, race-based 911 calls illegal; the right for persons not under arrest to record law enforcement; and the Police Statistics and Transparency Act, which directs courts to collect racial and demographic data for low-level offenses and publish it online each month, along with mandating police to report any deaths during arrest to the Department of Criminal Justice Services. The governor also signed laws requiring that officers report discharging their weapons; people in custody are given medical and mental health services as needed; State Police patrol officers wear body cameras; and the state creates a Law Enforcement Misconduct Investigative Office under the Department of Law which will investigate misconduct complaints against any local police department.

Charles and Inez Barron both said the new state laws, as well as those passed at the city level, are not fully responsive to the needs of the people, and that their passage had been long overdue. Charles referred to the history of the chokehold bill and how, although an NYPD ban on chokeholds had been implemented in different forms for decades it had not stopped police from using the maneuver on unarmed, Black civilians (like Eric Garner).

Charles Barron launched into criticism of Attorney General Letitia James, who like the Barrons is a Black Democratic Brooklynite (James was a City Council member, then New York City Public Advocate before being elected Attorney General). By Cuomo executive order going back several years, before James took office in 2019, the Attorney General acts as a special prosecutor in cases where police kill unarmed civilians, a responsibility now codified. James is also currently investigating NYPD interactions with protestors, as requested by Cuomo. Charles Barron said he doesn’t see James’ office as a separate, objective entity because of the attorney general’s connection to Cuomo, who helped James win a crowded 2018 Democratic primary as the Democratic governor and former attorney general won a third gubernatorial term himself. 

“She is a disgrace to our people,” Charles Barron said of James. “She is a puppet for the governor and he doesn’t mind showing the strings. An independent office doesn’t need a governor to appoint them to do anything, but she got in there by way of favor from the governor and she’s his puppet.”

Charles Barron said that the attorney general’s office chose not to prosecute instances of police misconduct like the case of Saheed Vassell, an unarmed Black Brooklyn man who was shot by an NYPD officer in 2018, and appealed the case of Jalil Muntaqim, a former member of the Black Panther Party who contracted COVID-19 in prison and was set for temporary release until the state blocked the initial decision.

“Attorney General James has worked tirelessly and independently to investigate the interactions between the NYPD and protesters,” said a spokesperson for the Attorney General’s office in response to the criticism from Charles Barron. “While this investigation remains ongoing, it’s clear that many New Yorkers have lost faith in law enforcement, and Attorney General James is leading the charge for transparency, accountability, and progress. We must all work together to change the system, and we encourage Assemblymember Barron to share his ideas about redesigning the role of public safety with us.”

Governor Cuomo’s office did not respond to requests for comment for this article. These are not Charles Barron’s first critique of the governor’s actions, as seen in 2016 and 2018 when the Assembly member interrupted Cuomo’s annual State of the State addresses to question his commitment to public school funding, especially in low-income neighborhoods.

City Police Reform
The City Council also passed and Mayor Bill de Blasio signed a set of laws aimed at police reform and accountability. It approved its own chokehold bill, which went farther than the state legislation in that it criminalized any use of chokeholds by police, classified the action as a Class A misdemeanor, prohibited officers from compressing someone’s diaphragm during arrest, and criminalized other forms of restraint that put pressure on a person’s neck or back that may prevent breathing or blood flow. The Council also approved the Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology, or POST, Act, which requires the police to report on its surveillance technology and how it is used to the public; a disciplinary matrix to track officer misconduct; the right of the public to record law enforcement; and a mandate for police to display their badges at all times. 

Inez Barron said she commends her colleagues in the Council on the chokehold bill, but they need to stay resolute in the face of opposition from the police commissioner.

“I encourage them to stand tall and dig in because there’s going to be pushback,” she said. “There’s already talk about, ‘Well we need to amend that and not include the restrictions on other airway passages, we need to not have that in.’”

Otherwise, Inez Barron said the new disciplinary matrix loses some of its footing in reform because the police commissioner has no obligation to act on the findings. To introduce the type of accountability she wants to see in the NYPD, she said she is cosponsoring a bill with Council Member Alicka Ampry-Samuel, also a Black Brooklynite, to reform the Civilian Complaint Review Board. 

The CCRB is an agency that can receive complaints about certain types of alleged NYPD office misconduct, investigate those claims, and make recommendations on disciplinary actions. But Inez Barron said she found fault in the process because the police do not have to execute the recommendations and only a small percent of complaints are substantiated, meaning the CCRB finds enough evidence “to believe that the subject officer committed the alleged act without legal justification.” Jon Darche, the executive director of the CCRB, confirmed that 10 percent of complaints ultimately become substantiated in a June board meeting. 

The mayor, City Council, public advocate and police commissioner appoint the members of the CCRB, and that is one of Inez’s primary concerns in replacing the agency. The Barron-Ampry-Samuel legislation would section the city into 17 districts and hold elections in those districts for members of a new civilian review board. In addition, the four districts with the highest incidents of police misconduct complaints would receive an extra representative, for a total of 21 members. 

“This is legislation that is not just a knee-jerk response to the most recent conditions that we’re facing of police misconduct and police causing death,” said Inez. “This is legislation that’s been five, six years in the making.”

The Council member said the bill will also address another of her primary concerns, the CCRB’s power in investigating misconduct. She said the proposed new body would be able to hold hearings, have subpoena power, and implement binding decisions the commissioner cannot change but the individual who filed the complaint may appeal.

The last piece of the legislation would create the appointment of an independent prosecutor who is elected by the people and has the authority to prosecute police abuse cases that “rise to the level of a crime.”

Inez Barron said she and Ampry-Samuel will likely introduce the bill in the next several weeks, and have received calls from other Council members who want to support the proposal.

She said that officers who commit certain offenses, especially the shooting of unarmed civilians, should be immediately dismissed. She pointed again to what she said was a police force without adequate repercussions or accountability for their actions. 

“Things are not gonna change when they know the consequences for their actions are minimal,” said Inez. “They continue to be on the job, they continue to get increases in salary and rise through the ranks. It’s criminal, it’s really criminal.”

A Divisive City Budget 
The city budget that passed for the July 1 start to the new fiscal year served as another piece in the recent and ongoing public safety and police reform debate. Many protestors and elected officials called for an at least $1 billion reduction to the roughly $6 billion NYPD annual operating budget.

Inez Barron was among those officials, and she voted “no” on the budget deal -- as did Council Members Brad Lander, Carlos Menchaca, Jimmy Van Bramer, Ben Kallos, Antonio Reynoso, Carlina Rivera, Donovan Richards, and Helen Rosenthal -- because she said it did not meet those demands, not going far enough to “defund the NYPD” and shift resources to youth and social services.

Both Charles and Inez Barron noted some claims, chiefly by Mayor de Blasio, that the new budget moved $1 billion from the police, but said clearly, as acknowledged by City Council Speaker Corey Johnson and others, that it did not in actuality. While explaining her “no” vote during the City Council budget proceedings on June 30, Inez Barron said the mayor did not acknowledge the demands of the protestors in the actions he took, and argued for a “reduction in the ranks” of those officers “killing Black and brown people.”

“We need a hiring freeze, no new academy classes, and a reduction in uniformed officers’ headcount,” Barron said. “And just as the city had to pivot on a dime to address the COVID-19 pandemic, we must do likewise regarding the NYPD. There is, as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, quote, ‘the fierce urgency of now’ end quote. I vote no.”

The Barrons’ call for defunding the NYPD and, more broadly, for abolition of the police as it is currently structured, stands in some contrast to several Black City Council members who supported the budget deal reached between the mayor and the Council. Several of those Black elected officials, like Brooklyn’s Laurie Cumbo and Robert Cornegy and the Bronx’s Vanessa Gibson, have argued they while they want fairer policing their communities also want a strong police presence, and that while they favored moving some resources from the NYPD in the recent city budget, they were not supportive of a major “defunding” of the police department. Richards, who is likely to become the next Queens Borough President based on the recent Democratic primary he won, was the only Black Council member aside from Inez Barron who voted against the budget deal.

In particular with the city budget, the Barrons both called attention to school safety agents' planned multi-year move from the NYPD to the Department of Education as a soft reform and accounting gimmick.

“It was, I don’t want to say symbolic,” Inez Barron told Gotham Gazette of the NYPD changes in the budget. “It was, in fact, the act of defunding but it did not affect the officers themselves. I think as long as [Mayor de Blasio] has the commissioner that he has in place there’s going to be a lot of continuation of situations that are not beneficial to Black and brown people, particularly as they get involved in issues with the NYPD.”

Charles’ strong opinions have been recognized by most elected officials, including Mayor de Blasio. In a 2018 ceremony unveiling the Prince Joshua Avitto Community Center, named after a 6-year-old boy who was murdered in East New York, Charles suggested that as much as they were celebrating the new center, a revolution was imminent, and he repeated calls to abolish jails and shelters while investing more in jobs, youth centers, and economic development.

“So I want to say about the Assembly member – what you see is what you get,” de Blasio said after Barron’s remarks. “And that’s a compliment.” 

Youth services is also a significant point of contention for the Barrons in this year’s city finances. Charles said people should not consider the Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP), which the adopted budget partially restored through the Summer Bridge initiative after de Blasio had cut the entire SYEP in his executive budget plan, as a win in the city budget.

“On the youth program alone I wouldn’t have passed this budget, I wouldn’t have voted for it,” Charles Barron said. “How can they feel good about 35,000 youth slots and you got $88 billion [total budget]? You cut it from 70 [thousand slots] and then brag about how you saved it.”

Both Barrons also brought up $450 million the mayor said was being moved from planned NYPD capital spending and reserved for youth and recreation centers and how, in their experience, the bureaucracy around creating those buildings delays plans by three to five years. Inez Barron did say, however, that she saw the restoration of funding for CUNY’s Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP) as an accomplishment. ASAP offers special financial and academic resources for students to graduate from associate-degree programs. Both Barrons are CUNY Hunter College alumni; Inez served as teacher, administrator, and principal in education for years before running for office, and she serves as the chair of the Council’s Committee on Higher Education, where she has pushed for making CUNY tuition-free again.

In light of what they considered disappointing reforms and budgeting amid a more widespread reckoning about race and power, their pursuit of a Black-led political movement seems top of mind for both Barrons. They said they will continue to grow their movement until it is strong enough to stand as its own political party without being co-opted by people who do not share their same aims.

“I plan on speaking truth to power no matter what the consequences are,” said Charles Barron. “Inevitably, I believe our struggle may be long, but our victory is certain.”

Note: this article has been updated to list all the correct neighborhoods in Council District 42.

Inspecting voting equipment (photo: Senator Michael Gianaris)

The June 2020 primaries in New York were an unusually thick morass of bureaucratic challenges as the city and state election systems shifted to a mostly-mail-in format amidst the coronavirus outbreak.

In New York City more than 80,000 mail-in ballots were disqualified on technical grounds -- a full fifth of the 400,000-plus ballots cast that way and a tenth of the total. Tens of thousands of ballots were either sent out late by the New York City Board of Elections or never delivered to voters who requested them.

Thousands of ballots were thrown out by the city board because they weren't postmarked by the U.S. Postal Service, a move that was overturned last week by a federal judge who blamed "systemic failures" for the mass disqualification. The State Board of Elections said it would appeal the decision -- asserting that counting the rejected ballots now, as one commissioner put it, "will place a tremendous burden on the local boards of elections as they are preparing for the November general election and is highly unlikely to change the results in any contest" -- but the New York Attorney General, Letitia James, decided otherwise.

With fewer than 90 days until Election Day, administrators, lawmakers, voting reform advocates, and voters are looking ahead to the general election, where the presidential contest is expected to draw a groundbreaking number of voters. It is unclear how many will be heading to the polls versus voting by mail, especially given uncertainty around what the virus transmission risk will be and what provisions for broad absentee voting will be in play.

On Tuesday, the New York State Legislature is holding a joint oversight hearing to review the 2020 primaries as the fate of legislation impacting the way elections are run remains up in the air. There is a long list of voting-related bills that fall into three categories: those passed by both houses of the Legislature and waiting action by Governor Andrew Cuomo; bills passed by one house of the Legislature; and bills passed by neither house. There are also the matters of steps Cuomo might take by executive action, depending on what the Legislature does and developments between now and the fall election; administrative changes the New York State and City Boards of Elections might make, including around beefing up personnel; and the status of the Postal Service, which President Donald Trump appears to be targeting.

To reach the unprecedented expansion of mail-in voting in June, Governor Andrew Cuomo signed a series of executive orders expanding eligibility, requiring pre-paid postage, and even mandating that every registered voter eligible for the primaries received an absentee ballot application in the mail.

In response to the mess that unfolded, state lawmakers in July passed a series of bills aimed at codifying or adjusting elements of the absentee ballot mailing and counting procedures to set clearer and more practical standards for local boards of elections. The governor has yet to sign any of them, nor has he said whether he would sign new executive orders, while elections experts and some legislators say the legislation alone will not be enough.

"I believe that they will be signed by the governor," said Assemblymember Charles Lavine, a Nassau County Democrat who chairs the Assembly’s election law committee and sponsored one of the bills, by phone.

"But beyond that," he continued, "I believe that if for whatever reason the governor decides not to sign any of the bills, the governor will himself cover the provisions of those bills through executive orders."

"We are reviewing the bills," wrote Caitlin Giouard, a spokesperson for Cuomo, in an email. The bills were delivered to the governor on Monday, according to the State Senate's website, giving him 10 days to act (not including Sundays) before they automatically become law.

Codifying and Improving the Expanded Absentee Voting Process for Fall 2020
The centerpiece of the package, passed by the Democratic-controlled State Legislature in the special session last month, is a bill sponsored by Senator Alessandra Biaggi and Assembly Member Jeffrey Dinowitz, both Bronx Democrats, that would broaden the definition of "Temporary Illness" -- one of the acceptable excuses for absentee voting under state law -- to include the risk of spreading or contracting an illness like COVID-19.

The bill is similar to Cuomo's executive order for the primaries, which has expired, except that it applies to diseases beyond COVID-19.

"All of these executive orders are subject to renewal and expansion and contraction and ending. They're executive orders and nothing else is really happening," said Sarah Steiner, a veteran election lawyer in New York State. "Nothing is in effect for the general election."

Three of the other bills in the package aim to correct issues that arose in June, when the absentee voting option, which previously served voters numbering in the thousands each election, was taken by hundreds of thousands.

One partially solves the postmark issue by saying that ballots that were received by a board of elections on the day after election day will be counted, even if they are missing a postmark.

The judge's ruling last week expanded that buffer to two days after election day for missing postmarks, but advocates say that still leaves a large window within the acceptable statutory timeframe that mailed ballots must be accepted when they do have a postmark.

"They're willing to protect votes one day later with no postmark and two days later with no postmark, and that leaves a five-day hole," said Jarret Berg, an election lawyer in New York and co-founder of the advocacy group Vote Early NY.

"How you treat certain ambiguities in the election law, that's for the State Board to clarify," he added. "There is the statute, and we can clean some of that up, but between the statute and what the counties are doing is the State Board. It's either a vacuum or they put down some clear rules."

Berg says the State Board of Elections, a regulatory and oversight body governing county-level election boards, should be playing a bigger role in setting uniformity among the various pieces of the elections bureaucracy, including the increasingly prominent USPS. "Why isn't there a three-page MOU between the head of the Post Office in New York and the State Board of Elections that just explains how you handle election paper?," Berg asked rhetorically.

"The USPS has already acknowledged in writing they are supposed to postmark every piece of election mail by their own rules and regulations," wrote John Conklin, a spokesperson for the State Board of Elections (SBOE), in an email to Gotham Gazette.

"The SBOE and the local boards worked with the Postal Service’s Media Design teams to ensure that every county’s absentee ballot mail pieces were to USPS’s exact specifications so they would be tracked according to how the USPS needed them and word still didn’t get out to all post offices," Conklin wrote. "I don’t know what an MOU would do. We’ve been talking with USPS for months on these matters."

"The Postal Service’s policy is to postmark ballots, regardless of the postage-payment method," wrote Xavier Hernandez, a spokesperson for the USPS, in an email to Gotham Gazette. "Leading up to the June 23rd election, the Postal Service instructed employees in New York State about the Postal Service’s ballot postmarking processes and procedures. All delivery units in New York, reviewed the standard operating procedures for ballot postmarking."

"We are aware that some ballots may not have been postmarked and have taken action to resolve the issue going forward," he added. "We continue to work with the Secretary of State and all New York Boards of Election and look forward to a successful general election."

Another bill would allow voters to apply for an absentee ballot prior to 30 days before an election, which would give local elections administrators more lead time to begin processing them.

That was a problem in June, when thousands of registered and eligible voters did not receive their requested ballots until it was too late to cast them, or not at all.

"To those voters who did not have an opportunity to cast their ballots in the primary election, we should apologize for not doing more," wrote Douglas Kellner, the Democratic Co-Chair of the State Board of Elections, in a memo to the New York City Board of Elections.

"Elected officials and others warned that we were not deploying sufficient resources to mail out absentee ballots in a timely manner, and in hindsight we could have done more to address that problem," wrote Kellner (who was the same commissioner who said canvassing non-postmarked ballots cast in June after election certification would be a "tremendous burden").

Another bill, sponsored by Lavine and Senator Zellnor Myrie, a Brooklyn Democrat and the State Senate's elections committee chair, would create a kind of remote curing process for absentee ballots that are not accepted due to a technical error. If an absentee ballot contains certain "deficiencies" like a missing signature, the voter will be notified and given a limited window to correct the mistake. But some voting advocates say the bill could have gone further to give voters more time to fix a wider range of technicalities.

"Arguably, no bill goes far enough," Lavine told Gotham Gazette. "I'm very pleased that we were able to take the first steps...We're going in the right direction.”

"I do understand the critique of the voting rights advocates but our government is all about compromise," he added.

The New York City Board of Elections, which is responsible for roughly 40 percent of the state's registered voters, would not comment on the package. "We don't comment on pending legislation," wrote board spokesperson Valerie Vazquez in a text message.

In June, Cuomo signed legislation permitting voters to apply for absentee ballots online after the June primary, a codification of part of his executive order. But there appears to be no legislation to require election administrators to proactively mail absentee applications to registered voters, as they were required to do by executive order for the primaries.

Other Voting Reforms on the Table; Registration Deadlines; & More
Some bills that advocates want to see before the governor have thus far failed to gain traction in both chambers of the Legislature, including some related to counting ballots despite certain deficiencies.

One would require boards of elections to count ballots where the envelopes have been sealed by tape or glue, as opposed to by the built-in adhesive. Another would require counting when the "intent of the voter is unambiguous," ensuring that a ballot will be accepted if a voter fails to provide a particular signature or date. Both bills are still in committee.

On Friday, State Senator Brad Hoylman, a Manhattan Democrat, introduced a bill that would allow local boards of elections to set up secure drop boxes for voters to submit their absentee ballots, rather relying on the postal service.

Hoylman and Assembly Member Dan Quart, another Manhattan Democrat, also sponsor a bill that would allow voters to track their absentee ballots like they would a package in the mail, and requires boards of elections to provide an explanation if the ballot is rejected. The bill has not advanced in either house.

For the June elections, Cuomo's executive order provided that the absentee ballots include postage paid envelopes, which they are currently not required by law to do. Senator James Sanders Jr., a Queens Democrat, and Dinowitz introduced legislation to codify that for future elections, but it has not come to a vote.

A different bill, which would allow online voter registration for New York City residents, passed the Senate but remains in committee in the Assembly. The bill would sunset in 2021, when the state's online voter registration portal is expected to launch, but would allow online registration in the city amid a massive drop in new voter registration brought on by the pandemic.

New voters must register by October 9 in order to vote in the 2020 general election in New York.

In July, the Senate and Assembly passed a bill establishing automatic voter registration, which does not go into effect until 2023. The bill requires certain government agencies to establish a procedure with the State Board of Elections to automatically register clients to vote when they provide the necessary personal information when seeking services.

Earlier this year, Myrie, the Senate's elections committee chair, introduced the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act (posthumously renamed) that would codify elements of the federal VRA into state election law. The bill has no Assembly companion at this time.

Many of the measures suggested by voting advocates and state elections administrators would require more personnel and resources, either to process absentee ballots, better utilize the state’s new early voting option, or address Election Day delays.

In his memo to the New York City Board of Elections, Kellner said the city board would have to take far greater steps to ensure shorter lines at poll sites during the likely explosive turnout of the general election. He implored the city board to strive to ensure voters aren't waiting at poll sites more than 30 minutes, as mandated by state law ("New York City has never come close to meeting that mandate in presidential general elections," he wrote) and suggested having the city close down streets and set up tents for outdoor voting near poll sites. In terms of processing absentee ballots, he said administrators need to "dramatically scale up" the number of tables and personnel dedicated to counting ballots.

"New York City has more poll workers than needed for primary and special elections and is understaffed in many locations for the presidential election," Kellner wrote. "The solution is obvious, albeit not so simple to accomplish. We need more registration check-in tables. That is where the bottlenecks typically occur. Yes, more tables mean that we need more poll-workers to staff these tables, and that means that we need more space."

Steiner, the election lawyer, believes the state's new early voting option has been under-promoted and under-utilized.

"You had nine days of early voting and only something like 52,000 people voted," Steiner said. "But those nine days that there are massive halls in which people can go and vote at their leisure" could have accommodated more socially distant in-person voting, she said. "You could have half the people voting early and it wouldn't be any stress on [elections administrators] at all."

A bill passed in July that goes into effect in 2021 would require counties to establish an early voting site in the largest population center, an additional requirement to the mandate that they be established for every increment of 50,000 voters. New York City would not be affected since it is a municipality that spans five counties (the five boroughs).

There are nine days of early voting for the 2020 general election, beginning Saturday, October 24, and extending through Sunday, November 1, with sites open for extended hours some evenings. Election Day is Tuesday, November 3.

In anticipation of another crush of mailed ballots, the New York City Board of Elections on August 4 approved the purchase of five state-of-the-art absentee-ballot counting machines -- one for each borough -- for roughly $1.5 million. The machines will help streamline absentee canvassing.

"That is something that should be watched,” Steiner said, “whether the absentee ballot handling is going to be improved, whether that is the only improvement to the handling of absentee ballots that they make.”