Racial and Economic Justice: Part 1

Racial and Economic Justice: Creating a Just & Equitable City for All, Part 1

A red and blue gradient background with the Rebecca for New York logo at the bottom. Written on the image is “Racial and Economic Justice: Part 1.”

I believe that there is no way to separate racial and economic justice; the two are intrinsically intertwined. Dividing these two issues has fundamentally harmed Black and brown communities from America’s founding to the current day. Lack of economic opportunity is one of the greatest stains of systemic racism, and we feel it everywhere in New York City — from how we fund our schools, to how we navigate our streets, to how our government spends money to preserve racist institutions instead of supporting working class people. For example, the billions we spend on expanding the police and constructing new jails — sustaining a system of mass incarceration that disproportionately devastates Black and brown people — could be spent on housing, educational facilities, and direct payments to New Yorkers in need.

Today, I am releasing part one of my Racial and Economic Justice Plan.

Before we go further, it demands to be discussed: I am a white woman releasing a racial and economic justice platform, running for public office on Lenape land in a city constructed by the labor of enslaved people. As a benefactor of white supremacy’s historic and contemporary privileges, I recognize that my silence perpetuates violence. I will fight for liberation and racial equity by amplifying the voices of community members who have been most harmed by our city’s unjust, racist, violent, and exclusionary systems.

I identify as an organizer and abolitionist. This means that I believe in collaborative, community-centered policy, not top-down or prescriptive leadership. Beginning in June of 2020, I helped organize the nightly Upper East Side for Black Lives Matter gathering in Carl Schurz Park to support the Black Lives Matter movement and rally against white supremacy and police violence. We stood vigil and grieved; we also mobilized and organized our community around defunding the police. A disproportionately white district in the most diverse city in the country, we also reflected on how we experience and perpetuate racism, personally and systemically.The community-based vigil has been a space for many to share, learn and grow their awareness of the structural racism that is not only evident in our system of policing, but in every aspect of life. I am proud to have played a small part in facilitating the gathering and our district’s solidarity with the struggle for Black liberation.

I believe that justice will only be fully delivered when we fundamentally change policing in New York and provide all communities with the resources, services, and investments that they both need and deserve. In the process, our legislation and legislators must prioritize the Black and brown communities who have been most harmed by our unjust, racist, violent, and exclusionary systems. My theory of change is that organizing is the most effective way to transform how we do politics. As such, I will view my role, if elected, to uplift and center the perspective of my Black, brown, indigenous, and AAPI neighbors and organize within this community and the greater NYC community to bring about change for our historically (and currently) marginalized neighbors.

I also know how job creation, union power, and economic policy is key to solving racial inequity. As a longtime advocate for building multiracial, working class, trades unions I have witnessed the collective power that can secure fair and dignified wages, fair land use, and just contracts in creating generational opportunity and stability.

My campaign has started to chip away at existing inequities with our movement for intersectional disability justice, language justice, accessibility, inclusion, and worker power. But building this platform would not be possible without 2020’s summer of activism led by Black and brown New Yorkers — as well as the legacy of leaders of justice in New York City, from Shirley Chisholm to Marsha P. Johnson.

Reimagination is a popular word in this year’s primary, and for good reason: To fix what is broken, we need to have the courage and capacity to create new alternatives. The risk we run is not investing enough in our bright future. We must ensure growth and equity to create a city that works for everyone.

Ensure an Equitable Recovery

COVID-19 has afflicted dramatic losses on almost every community — but the disparity has heavily been towards harming Black and brown communities. As Council Member I will recognize the disparity in harm, and push for a just recovery that starts with communities that have suffered the most.

• Advocate for retroactive and proactive rent cancellation, and a statewide eviction moratorium to ensure COVID-19 does not push any family out of their home
• Ensure equity in healthcare by learning from gaps in healthcare during COVID-19 and 2021’s vaccine proliferation.
• Reopen public hospitals that were closed in recent years to serve our most at-risk populations, every day and in our next crisis.
• Pass commercial rent relief, rent control, and the Small Business Jobs Survival Act to ensure our small businesses can remain in place

Improve and Integrate Our Schools

“Stuyvesant High School admitted 895 freshmen in 2019, but only seven were Black according to The New York Times. According to Teens Take Charge, only 6 percent of specialized high school students are Latinx, and only 4 percent are Black, despite making up 42 percent and 26 percent of all New York City public school students, respectively.” — People’s Plan’s Education

These statistics will drive my approach to our education system as Council Member. We must integrate our schools. Our current system uses bogus claims of exceptionalism (justified by a handful of racist metrics) to exclude Black and brown New Yorkers from high quality education. This is a stain on our City, and one that I will work from day one to rectify. Every student should have access to the resources they need, and we must end the concentration of resources and bring about needed change to end racism in our school system.

• Support and champion the Racially Just Public Schools platform
• Support and champion the People’s Plan’s Education platform
• Increase school funding through the New York City budget to decrease class sizes and hire more teachers to ensure high quality and personalized education across all our city’s schools
• Increase parent participation in our city’s agencies with jurisdiction over schools.
• End the SHSAT and create a more equitable process for admission to specialized schools
• Eliminate the presence of the NYPD, School Safety Agents, and punitive or criminalizing surveillance techniques like metal detectors and sweeps from our schools
• Support a New Deal for CUNY to ensure free undergraduate tuition for New York City residents
• Implement culturally responsive curricula that showcases the expansiveness/contributions of Black history and activism in our country and city

Combat Environmental Racism to Construct and Invest in a Green City

Our public parks and green spaces are supposed to be our most democratic, accessible public offerings — yet are among our most unfortunate sites of environmental racism and classism. The average park serving majority non-white communities is half the size of parks that serve majority white communities.[1] As Council Member, I will fight to expand green spaces throughout NYC and our park-sparse district. By ending disparities in access, we’ll create more room to play, garden, gather, move, and breathe.

• Legislate to encourage urban farming and local food production; expand funding for reducing nutrition disparities across the city
• Evaluate agreements to ensure public school meals are nutrient-dense, high quality and meet dietary restrictions/needs of the entire student population
• Follow the recommendations of City Council’s 2020 Growing Food Equity Report by creating a comprehensive food policy plan; bolstering the Office of Food Policy; expanding SNAP, Health Bucks, school food provision, and emergency food provision, including community fridges; supporting creation of an Urban Agriculture Plan; expanding the presence of high-quality groceries in lower-nutrition areas through zoning; and empowering community gardens as local development engines
• Ensure new park development be focused on communities that have the least amount of greenspace per capita, and communities that have been historically kept from greenspace
• Tether the creation of public park space to the development of new lots
• Support a Green New Deal and the Green New Deal for NYCHA
• Mandate green construction, in accordance with green buildings and retrofit plan legislation
• Mandate a 5-borough resiliency study and plan, ensuring that our district’s most environmentally vulnerable blocks in East Harlem and near Holmes Towers and Isaacs Houses have adequate protection and fortification
• Support the Renewable Rikers Plan
• Implement free broadband for every New York household, starting with low income communities
• Restore funding for DSNY to ensure regular sanitation pickups and increased access to trash, compost, and recycling disposal
• Increase resiliency and green building technology in our housing stock
• Implement a citywide eco-centered housing plan that promotes white and green roofs, installation of solar panels on new residential development and public housing, moves mechanical equipment out of basements to prevent flooding damage, and decreases the carbon footprint of each building
• Expand public, local green space and ensure that it accompanies new housing development and public housing, including urban farming and community gardens

Zone and Develop for Racial Equity

In my Affordable Housing Plan, I laid out a thorough vision for how we can (re)construct our city to support economic, racial, and disability justice. I believe that further points that specifically target Racial Justice include:

• Pass Intro 1572 to mandate all neighborhood rezonings include a racial impact study
• End the gerrymandering of Special Employment Districts to ensure that public resources actually help our chronically underemployed neighbors
• End de Blasio-style rezonings that displace and gentrify communities and ensure that historically underserved communities have first say and comprehensive input in land use decisions.

Construct and Invest in a Navigable City

I have often spoken on the challenges of navigating this city as a disabled New Yorker. While it may be challenge for me, a white disabled woman, accessibility is far worse in outer-boroughs where the majority of non-white New Yorkers reside. While I have access to the modernized and ADA-compliant Q stops, these are few and far between once you leave Manhattan. As Council Member I will:

• Focus accessibility and service improvements in outer-boroughs and other communities that have been least prioritized in the push for accessibility
• Increase funding and eligibility for the Fair Fares program with the long term goal of free public transit for all New Yorkers
• Emphasize the importance of disability justice to racially and economically just transportation and streetscape qualities
• Make every subway station and method of public transportation fully accessible and ADA-compliant
• Expand the number of disabled parking spots and permits
• Make crosswalks safer for Blind, low-sight, Deaf, and hard of hearing New Yorkers
• Fund infrastructure improvements to ensure sidewalks are smooth and safe for wheelchair user and other mobility aids
• Add benches and bus shelters at all MTA bus stops
• Improve storm responses with disabled New Yorkers’ needs in mind
• Protect Access-A-Ride and expand affordable service

Represent our Immigrant and Multilingual Neighbors

For a City whose signature is our diversity, our multilingual services remain woefully underfunded and limited. Many of our immigrant neighbors give far more to New York City than they receive, keeping our neighborhoods running without receiving crucial relief during COVID or being able to choose who represents them in local government. As Council Member, I want to change that, fostering a community that welcomes and supports everyone, regardless of where they’re from:

• Prohibit the NYPD’s persecution of immigrants, as well as the Department’s collaboration with and invitation of ICE in our neighborhoods
• Emphasize the importance of translation and language justice by expanding translation services, creating jobs for our immigrant communities in the process
• Pass legislation to increase language access around elections, following on my letter and petition to the NYC Campaign Finance Board asking the body to publicly fund language translation and accessibility costs
• Provide cash relief for excluded workers, building off the historic multi-billion-dollar funding for excluded workers in this year’s New York State budget
• Limit the ability of city-level agencies and authorities to uncover documentation status in criminal or civil proceedings, no interaction with city authorities should require admission of citizenship documents
• Create and invest in community services for immigrants, including legal, healthcare, housing, job search, and mental health support

Rally Against Hate and Violence

I’m running for office in unwavering solidarity with every creed and community in our district — and seek to honor the generous, empathetic principles taught in our synagogues, churches, temples, and mosques when I bring our constituents’ interests with me to City Hall each day. Religious and ethnic diversity is what makes New York City so exceptional, and I will not stand idly by when identities are endangered or jeopardized by hatefulness, too often a punishment for courageous faith and activism. Between the concerning rise in violence targeting our AAPI neighbors and a legacy of antisemitic and racist violence across our nation, I pledge to fight intolerance and foster inclusivity.

• Host regular briefings and office hours with our district’s faith communities and affinity groups, in accordance with holiday calendars to make events maximally available
• Schedule intervention trainings to empower physical support, protection, and solidarity in observed incidences of violence
• Gather neighbors following hate violence to foster support and comfort, discuss safety needs, and field responses
• Support community organizations and gathering spaces to create a hateful incident-reporting schema that fosters true community safety and encourages the deployment of restorative justice techniques

Bolster True Public Safety and Defund the Police

“Who keeps us safe? // We keep us safe”. The reality of this moment is that NYC has increased the NYPD budget to astronomical levels with neither a contribution to public safety, nor a better relationship between Black and brown communities and the NYPD. We have tried reform, we have tried small changes, and it has been a failure. We cannot continue, as a City or Nation, to believe that Public Safety is only defined via an armed officer with a gun. This next council needs to provide genuine public safety to New Yorkers — safety from gun violence, harassment, and safety from police violence. As the Council Member for District Five I will make our community safer by addressing the root causes of violence: the carceral state, poverty, and a lack of services.

• Immediately divest $3 billion dollars from the NYPD budget, the amount added under the De Blasio administration alone and fully fund community based and restorative justice-oriented alternatives to NYPD interventions by properly investing in civil society
• Immediately excise NYPD from our schools (“School Safety Agents”), traffic enforcement, public transit, mental health response, homelessness response, family conflict, and drug use intervention
• End militarization of police by banning the presence of military equipment on our streets
• Diver and decrease crime by creating community jobs and resources — from a conservation corps to a democracy outreach and protection corps and arts corps
• Ensure the Civilian Complaint Review Board has binding decision-making power and has membership reflective of communities historically targeted and endangered by policing
• Expand gun buybacks and increase incentives to remove guns from our streets
• Support gun control and initiatives to curb gun violence on a city, state, and federal level
• Decriminalize drug use, betting, and sex work, and ensure sex workers recieve the same protections that all workers deserve.

Fight for Gender, Sexuality, and LGBTQIA+ Justice

Racial and economic justice includes honoring and uplifting all identities and identifying the intersection of oppressive systems.

• Invest in community support programs to house, support, and financially empower any and all LGBTQIA+ neighbors in need
• Invest in bystander intervention and community support programs, recognize our city’s historic and current lack of protection for the LGBTQIA+ community, particularly trans women of color
• Expand supportive housing and resource programs for LGBQTIA+ youth, including services in school systems to support and offer opportunities to these young people
• Eliminate maternal mortality and advocate for maternal health by expanding and guaranteeing access to healthcare at each stage of pregnancy, including access to doulas, midwives, and holistic care methods
• Expand 3-K and Pre-K by bolstering the number of seats in our district
• Fight to create universal child-care in New York City, organizing to connect families with free and low-cost options

[1]. Jerry Monkman, “The Heat is On”, The Trust for Public Land, [link]