Park Slope Reader

politics

Doug Schneider: On Rebuilding & Reform

By Filed Under: Community, Feature Tagged With: , , ,

Meet the Civil Rights Attorney and Democratic Community Leader Running to Represent Brooklyn’s 39th District 

“When people see politicians with children, they often assume that the children are being used as props. For me, bringing them to work is a necessity and a reality,” said Doug Schneider, over the phone. He regularly brings his children to work, including in the political arena. His seven-and-a-half-year-old son is a 1st grader at PS 107; his daughter is four. Schneider is transparent about the challenges of being a politician and equal caregiver; and, after a year of overseeing remote learning for his son, among countless other pandemic-related complications, he makes a strong case for normalizing children in the workplace— including on the campaign trail.  

In the fall of 2020, Doug Schneider, a civil and criminal defense litigator and Democratic District Leader for the 44th Assembly District, announced his candidacy to represent City Council District 39 in the upcoming Democratic primary election. District 39 includes Park Slope, Gowanus, Carroll Gardens, Columbia Waterfront, Cobble Hill, Windsor Terrace, and portions of Borough Park and Kensington. Schneider joined the primary for term-limited Councilman Brad Lander’s seat, while Lander himself is in the running for City Comptroller. Recently, Schneider’s campaign received the endorsements of 39 community leaders, including support from other District Leaders, PTA leaders, climate activists, worker’s rights advocates, and activists for transportation and street safety. 

“As we face a post-pandemic recovery, we need experienced leaders with a proven record of results,” Community Leader, Dorothy Siegel, told Bklyner in a statement. Siegel is the founder of ASD Nest, a community-focused program that specializes in serving the needs of children living with an autism spectrum disorder. Siegel is right— City Council needs an experienced leader with both a history of community leadership and an agenda to ensure a full economic recovery. 

In addition to historic economic fallout, the novel coronavirus pandemic exposed some of our nation’s deepest inequalities. In New York City, once the center of the global outbreak, many low-paid workers were forced to continue working in unsafe conditions, without proper PPE or adequate salary. When schools shuttered, women disproportionately left their careers to become full-time caregivers, and now struggle to reclaim footing in the job market. Those from historically underserved communities have experienced the highest rates of eviction, viral infection, and death. For these reasons and more, Schneider is committed to not only rebuilding District 39 but also plans to address the longstanding discrimination that has hindered minority communities. 

The focus of Schneider’s campaign platform is: 1) Transportation and Street Safety, including reimagined sidewalks and bike lanes, accessible public transportation, and the expansion of traffic safety enforcement and speed cameras; 2) Economic Recovery for small businesses, women and working parents, and out-of-work New Yorkers; 3) Education, including updated school infrastructure, expanded after-school programs, a pandemic-response taskforce, and substantial investments in higher education; and 4) Constituent Services, providing a broad range of services to constituents, including information on government programs and affordable housing resources, and an expansion of language access at the polls.  

Schneider’s ties to Brooklyn—and more specifically, to Park Slope— predate his plans to run for City Council. Though his parents are both from Brooklyn, Schneider and his siblings were raised in New Jersey. After graduating from law school and marrying his wife Joni, the couple decided to settle in South Slope, where they have resided for almost 15 years. Around the time of the 2016 presidential election, Schneider began to consider his run for City Council, as he did not like where the Trump Administration was leading the country. 

“I always had an interest in politics but never saw myself as someone who could get elected,” said Schneider. His involvement in volunteering for political campaigns goes back to 1999. After graduating from college, he worked as a congressional aid before attending law school. In recent years, he has served as a Trustee to the Park Slope Civic Council and has previously held a seat on the District Committee for Brad Lander’s participatory budget initiative.

“I saw where things were headed and I didn’t like where they were going. I began to think that I could make a difference,” Schneider said. He thought about the leading issues of the Brooklyn Democratic Party and the need for greater transparency. “I decided to run on issues that were at the forefront because they matched with the things that I have always been passionate about,” he told me. Schneider then shared his lived experiences as a small business owner, attorney, and activist. 

Schneider’s law practice focuses on civil and criminal cases, including employment discrimination and business litigation, and occasionally, pro-bono representation for street safety activists. He has worked with clients on cases related to employment discrimination, including a technician who was fired for a disability and a personal assistant who was wrongfully fired for being pregnant while she was on approved maternity leave. Schneider has also represented individuals charged with state and federal crimes, in addition to individuals under investigation by the federal government and the State of New York. 

As an experienced attorney and fierce advocate for civil rights issues and criminal justice reform, Schneider is also committed to bringing police reform to City Council by passing legislation to hold officers accountable for misconduct, and reallocating resources to invest in underserved communities. 

In July of 2020, after months of school closures across the country, Schneider organized a DOE town hall meeting to discuss NYC’s re-opening plans and devised strategies for creating long-term solutions to safely re-open schools. Subsequently, Schneider organized a protest outside of City Hall in November, demanding that New York City schools stay open. Despite the city’s increasing positive test rate for COVID-19, the positive test rate in schools was under 1%. 

“There was a path to doing this effectively, but the plan to fully re-open schools couldn’t be waiting until COVID completely disappeared,” Schneider told me. “We knew that we would eventually get to a point like today, where we are vaccinated, but we had to act before then.” He explained the lag in long-term planning and its negative effect on the mental and emotional health of students.  

In addition to the implementation of the Pandemic Response Emergency Plan (PREP), Schneider’s multi-step solution to long-term pandemic planning, he also plans to expand after-school programs, restore arts curriculum, and address the longstanding racial divides within New York City’s school system. Schneider has pledged to end the school-to-prison pipeline by replacing law enforcement with social workers and mental health professionals.

I asked Schneider how he and his family were managing to recover after a year of such intense devastation. 

Quietly, I wondered how a politician like Doug Schneider—with his extraordinary record of experienced leadership and Herculean efforts to rebuild his community— was able to hold down a day job AND be an equal caregiver. His answer was remarkably, human. He told me that his family survived in 2020. They continued to persist one day at a time— albeit still adjusting and still making mistakes, like “too much screen-time on some days.”

“We have to forgive ourselves for our mistakes made during the pandemic that allowed us to get by,” he told me. “New Yorkers are resilient and communal […] and we all did what we had to do to survive.” 

Meet Shahana Hanif, The Bangladeshi Muslim Woman Running To Represent District 39

By Filed Under: Feature, Persisting in Park Slope Tagged With: , ,

Shahana Hanif – Mailer Marketing Campaign 2021 for City Council

When she was 17 years old, Shahana Hanif received life-changing news. A doctor told her that the reason she was experiencing so much pain each day was that she had Lupus, a disease that causes the body’s immune system to attack its own tissues and organs.

“I barely knew what Lupus was,” said Hanif, a Muslim feminist and daughter of Bangladeshi immigrants running to represent Brooklyn’s 39th District in the New York City Council. 

“I had just started the 12th grade when I was diagnosed,” she added. “When I should’ve been thinking about colleges, prom or going abroad, which were the conversations my friends were having, I was needing to understand this degenerative, complicated medical issue that I had never heard about.”

Hanif felt alone. In storybooks, “there were not protagonists who looked like me,” Hanif said. At home and in her community, having a chronic illness was taboo and stigmatized. Despite being diagnosed with an incurable disease that, at a young age, occupied many of her thoughts and emotions, Hanif was pressured to keep her diagnosis, and all of the struggles that came with it, somewhat to herself. 

Now 30 years old, Hanif has spent the past 13 years in and out of intensive care units. She has gone through chemotherapy, had biopsies and has had both of her hips and her left shoulder replaced as a result of the complexities of the disease. 

At the beginning stages, Hanif remembers waiting for hours and hours, confused and in pain, in the waiting area of the emergency room at Coney Island Hospital. In ICUs, she was consistently left without access to adequate medication. 

“The limitations in care for young people and for immigrant communities was very evident,” said Hanif.

A couple of years later, while pursuing her undergraduate degree at Brooklyn College, Hanif remembers struggling to find housing that accommodated her inabilities. “I had not yet had my hips replaced, and I was suffering,” said Hanif. “I couldn’t walk.”

Soon after, Hanif had her application to Access-A-Ride, the NYC public transportation van service designed for those with certain disabilities and health conditions, rejected. 

“To get rejected was humiliating,” she said. “It is absurd to think that a service that should be available to people like me includes bureaucracy. I didn’t get to make the decision for myself, someone else did. This meant that I was spending hundreds of dollars on car services to get to and from doctors’ appointments. This was before Uber, Lyft and other rideshares.”

For over a decade, Hanif has felt the weight of living with Lupus. But as a Muslim woman with parents who immigrated from Southeastern Asia, she knows firsthand that structural inequities are not limited to those with illnesses or disabilities. 

“This disease pushed me into becoming a fighter,” said Hanif. “I learned to advocate for myself.” 

Throughout college and her professional career, Hanif has actively worked as an organizer in and around her home neighborhood of Kensington. Since May of 2018, Hanif has served as the director of organizing for current District 39 councilman Brad Lander, who is giving up his seat because he has reached his term limit. 

Hanif has focused a lot of her work on preserving and expanding public space for community events, advocating for immigrants and protecting those affected by domestic violence. She helped create the Avenue C Plaza, a public park in Kensington, a neighborhood long-known for its lack of public outdoor space. In April of 2019, Hanif was profiled in The New York Times after helping a Bangladeshi woman escape from an abusive forced marriage. 

If elected, Hanif would become the first Muslim and South Asian woman ever to serve in the New York City Council. She would also be the first woman ever elected to represent District 39, which covers Park Slope, Kensington, Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, and parts of Borough Park. 

As a city council member, Hanif’s number one priority would be improving education equity in the District. 

“I am a student of the district. I went to P.S. 230 in Kensington,” said Hanif. 

Hanif personally experienced the local public education system, which she said routinely fails many students and their families, particularly those who are immigrants or have disabilities. 

Specifically, Hanif would work to end admissions screening, a process heavily criticized for putting Black and brown students at a disadvantage. She would push for smaller class sizes, more guidance counselors and accessibility for students with disabilities. And she would work to create pipelines for Black and brown teachers. 

The second mission on Hanif’s agenda would be pushing for “free and accessible healthcare.” She would organize for universal healthcare and push to create a statewide single-payer healthcare system. She also claims that she would invest in translators and interpreters in the healthcare system to help immigrants, like her parents, understand what doctors and nurses are telling them. And she would recruit mental health counselors of color, with disabilities and from immigrant communities to work in public hospitals and community-based health clinics. 

As the daughter of a Bangladeshi restaurant owner, the third item on Hanif’s long list of priorities is to provide a path for small businesses to recover from the COVID pandemic. 

“So many stores on 5th Avenue and 7th Avenue are shuttered,” said Hanif. “The most impacted are women-and minority-owned businesses.” 

Specifically, Hanif wants to pass commercial rent cancellation, pass commercial rent control and permanently establish the Open Streets program, which provides restaurants and bars with more space to sit people and allows for more public art and performances. 

“I’m envisioning a new form of governance, one that isn’t alienating folks or making politics or government a separate entity,” said Hanif. “I’m just taking all of the work I’ve done, now with some bigger tools, to city hall. And the folks I’ve been working with are coming with me.”

LEARN MORE ABOUT SHANA FROM BK

Maya Wiley Runs for Mayor of New York City

By Filed Under: Feature, Part of the Solution, Sally Kohn Tagged With: , , ,

“We all see the world from the prism of our experience. The question is: How broad are our experiences? How deep are they?” Maya framed this fundamental question over the phone in the Fall of 2020, just weeks after announcing her groundbreaking – and unconventional – candidacy to be the next mayor of New York City.

Maya Wiley framed this fundamental question over the phone in the Fall of 2020, just weeks after announcing her groundbreaking — and unconventional — candidacy to be the next mayor of New York City. Wiley is a human rights activist and civil rights attorney with a decades-long record of leadership at the forefront of movements for social, economic, and racial justice. She is many other things, too. A black woman. A Brooklyn mom. A child of political icons.  

But what Maya Wiley is definitely NOT is a politician. Which is probably both her greatest asset and her greatest challenge in the mayoral contest.

Wiley was born in 1964 in Washington, D.C., to politically active parents who met in Syracuse. In many ways, her birth was a testament to the complexities of our nation, then as now. Wiley’s father, George, was a professor of organic chemistry who became a leading figure in the civil rights movement. He rose to national leadership in the Congress of Racial Equality and then founded the National Welfare Rights Organization. As a Black man organizing mostly women of color to agitate for dignity and justice in public assistance, he was an early pioneer of what we now call intersectionality — how gender and race and class compound and connect.  Wiley’s mother, Wretha, was a white woman from a Texas town Maya describes as “all white and very racist when she was growing up” who understood the injustice of exclusion and myopia and left to blaze a different path. I should clarify here that Maya Wiley is my friend from years of movement work together, and I met her mom several times before her passing. I can’t help but think that Maya’s candidacy to be the first Black woman mayor of the City of New York represents their daughter but also their hopes for our nation — that we could be the kind of place, the kind of people, who would choose their daughter to lead. 

Because who Maya Wiley is is central to understanding what kind of mayor she would be. After graduating from Columbia Law School and then clerking in Philadelphia, Wiley moved to Brooklyn in 1991 where she’s lived ever since. She held positions at the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and the ACLU, in addition to being a Senior Advisor on Race and Poverty at the Open Society Foundations, advancing human rights and justice around the globe. But perhaps the defining role in Wiley’s career was the one she created for herself when in 2002 she founded the Center for Social Inclusion, one of the nation’s first action-oriented think tanks focused on dismantling structural racism and inequity. With a tiny bit of seed money and, initially, running the organization without paying herself a salary, Wiley created applied research projects led in partnership with communities of color to develop and document transformative policy solutions in housing, food systems, technology access, and more. Yes, Wiley was also a prominent legal analyst for MSNBC and NBC until recently, a Senior Vice President and professor at The New School. Wiley may not be a conventional candidate but she is keenly aware of how city government works, how to manage within it, and what needs fixing to make us fairer and more just. She obviously has the chops to do the job.  She served as the first Black woman to be Counsel to a New York City Mayor, serving early in  Bill de Blasio’s administration. And after leaving in 2016, Chaired the NYC Civilian Complaint Review Board, sending the case of the officer who killed Eric Garner, former Officer Daniel Panteleo, to the NYPD to get him off the force.

But the formative part of Wiley’s career was spent not just talking about bold solutions to our biggest problems — but actually developing them.  When most politicians were still struggling to use words like “intersectional” in a sentence, Wiley was working with grassroots communities and leading innovators to actually put intersectionality into practice — and policy.

And that deep track record from her past shows up in her campaigning today. “I am running because this city can and must do more than recover from Covid,” she told me over the phone when we spoke. “It must reimagine itself as a place where we can all live with dignity. That means a place where we develop without displacement. That means a place where we put the public back in public safety. That means a place where the government is a partner and not a pariah. That means a place where communities of concern get the investments they need in order to become whole.”  

All of which Wiley insists is possible if we stop making bad choices forcing unnecessary trade-offs between helping affluent New Yorkers and Wall Street versus everyone else. “We can be a city that holds onto what we all love about New York,” Wiley says. “We love the fact that New York City is one of the most diverse cities in the world. That brings so much culture and innovation and makes us a place everyone wants to be. We have to hold onto that. But we can’t do that unless we reimagine the city as something that can include everyone.” In other words, Wiley argues, we don’t have to choose between fairness for all versus opportunity for some. There’s another way, where we “come together and have a real, honest conversation about what will make us stronger, what will make us more fair and more just… and bring this city back even stronger.” Wiley points to examples where we can make the city government more principled and more efficient and effective, invest in innovative affordable housing strategies and infrastructure investments that benefit us all.

But can we really do both?  Yes, insists Wiley with her characteristic mix of gumption and faith. “That’s why we need a non-traditional leader. Because we always could do both. We just haven’t had that option.”

Women of color in particular, Wiley explains, have never had the luxury of just “sticking with the status quo or reacting to it. We’ve always had to create.” She makes the case for why we need more diverse and inclusive leadership not just based on principle but practice — the real, concrete difference that leaders with broader perspectives bring to the table.

“I don’t embody every other,” Wiley explains, “but there’s a recognition when you are forced by society, the way we’ve structured society, to have to see many different experiences. Not everybody is forced to do that, but if you are black and female and have been fortunate enough to see what it’s like to be in a segregated, overcrowded, underfunded public school and to see what it’s like in a private school with small classrooms… to have the privilege of living in a black neighborhood where folks could barely get by and living uptown where people are living in mini-mansions… you have a sense of what other experiences are like.”  Which, to Wiley, is the point. We have constructed a society in which some of us, especially those of us often represented in positions of leadership, are distinctly less likely and even insulated from the experiences of others in our society. Electing Black women leaders isn’t just important because it makes our government look more like the people it represents but because diverse leaders can actually understand the lives and needs of all our communities.  When we talk about leadership and say “experience matters,” we also have to broaden our understanding of experience. Actually having lived the plights of ordinary New Yorkers should be a political prerequisite for any leader professing solutions for those plights. 

Which also may be the doorway to a different type of leadership altogether.  Wiley isn’t just positing herself as some sort of singularly unique and therefore singularly able savior, in the vein of ego-centric messiah-like political figures before her. She wants to bring her intersectional experiences and ideas into governing but she doesn’t want to stop there; she also wants to reimagine governing to be inherently more inclusive, participatory, and transparent. To this end, as part of her campaign, Wiley is organizing “People’s Assemblies” that bring wide ranges of New Yorkers together to discuss their priorities and needs and challenges and concerns — ”no matter which candidate they support,” Wiley notes — and come up with shared solutions. “So we’re not just telling folks, ‘Here’s what we’ll do for you.’  We’re starting a democratic practice of coming together and having these conversations.”  

In the first of these People’s Assemblies on the subject of gun violence, participants ranged from an Afro-Latina woman who grew up in public housing and a white man who was a former cop. The conversation — just the fact of them coming together and talking, and the shared struggles and solutions they and others were able to connect over — was, as Wiley describes it, “fantastic.” Several more People’s Assemblies will be organized by the campaign in the coming weeks and months.

“We’re not just asking for votes, we’re asking for community, we’re asking for folks to be in conversation,” Wiley adds. In this sense, Maya Wiley isn’t just a transformational candidate, she’s also running a transformational campaign.  

Which in so many ways makes sense given Wiley’s community organizing roots. In 2014, as Wiley was preparing to work in the de Blasio Administration — where she would ultimately experience how the transformative potential of city government could be wasted under an ineffective, visionless mayor — Wiley spoke to then Politico-reporter Maggie Haberman about the move. “You could have gone and made a million dollars,” Haberman noted, asking why Wiley wanted to work in city government instead.

In response, Wiley shared a memory from her father. “[A] friend of his once asked him, when do you stop, George And his answer was, ‘When no one else is hungry. And his friend said, Well, that’s never going to be the case. And he said, Well then you never stop.’”

Let’s hope Maya Wiley never stops fighting to bring her transformative experiences and ideas — and the experiences and ideas of all New Yorkers — to the fore. If that fight ultimately takes her to City Hall, we’ll be a better city and a better community because of it.

“A List of Times I Didn’t Say Anything”

By Filed Under: Community Tagged With: ,

When our white neighbor tells us my black husband looks like Barack Obama. Over and over again. She is developing dementia, I think. This is why I don’t say anything, I tell myself. My husband just smiles. 

When I choose the American flag stamp not the Marvin Gaye one for the envelope with the rent in it because I want our white landlord to like us. 

This is not the same as not saying anything, but it feels like it. Maybe I should call this list something different. Maybe our white landlord loves Marvin Gaye. 

When a white friend asked when I was pregnant if I might cornrow my baby’s hair. Except she called them “those little braids” not cornrows. 

When we were at the pool and a white woman wearing a kente cloth hairband handed me an invitation to an interracial family potluck. 

I said thank you like I was excited to join, but we did not go.

When a black friend invited me to a meet-up hosted by a group called Parents of Black Children. 

I said thank you like I was excited to join, but we did not go. 

When another black friend said, upon learning that my maternal grandfather was Sicilian, “Oh, so you’ve got some soul, I thought you were just Jewish.”

I did not say, Listen, we’re everywhere. In Italy, in Somalia, in Jesus, in Sammy Davis. In my children. Okay? 

When Representative Omar said it was all about the Benjamins, baby. 

When Hillary Clinton’s face was laid down on a Star of David as a presidential campaign ad.

Just to speak of Jewish. To speak of soul. The absence or the presence thereof, which is what I’m trying to do here, I think, what I’m trying to figure for. I don’t really know, if I’m being honest. 

I hate it when people say, “If I’m being honest.” 

The way people said, but his daughter is Jewish, like this meant something. 

I didn’t say, so what if she’s Jewish? And I definitely did not say, she’s not really Jewish anyway, Ivanka, like that white woman from the pool is not really black.  

An Impasta? That’s the punchline but now I can’t remember the joke. It was on the outside wall of Trader Joe’s where they tape these cute jokes on the walls to set the tone and the white woman behind me talked about how important it is for white people to join the conversation about police brutality.  

I did not turn around to join this conversation. I did not want to turn around and join any conversation in a mask because these masked conversations feel a little thwarted always, my eyes hurting after from over-squinting to act out a full smile with no mouth.

But I would not have joined this conversation anyway. 

When my white neighbor who voted once and will vote again for the current president said, I just like the way he says what he means and I usually agree with what he says.

I thought of when he said, “When they loot we shoot.”

I thought of George Floyd. I thought of George Floyd. I thought of George Floyd. 

When he said the thing about Mexican rapists when he said the thing about shithole countries in Africa when he said the thing about how if American Jews don’t support Israel they are traitors when he called Stormy Daniels Horseface when he said you grab them by the pussy and the blood coming from her wherever… 

When he said the blacks love me when he tweeted that House Representatives Omar and the other three of The Squad should go back where they come from if they don’t like it here. 

When I thought of those pictures of George Floyd strangling under that man’s knee. Saying please. Saying I can’t breathe. 

Everyone says “I felt sick” about those pictures. I thought of that photograph of Emmett Till. 

I thought of Freddie Gray in Baltimore where I’m from. 

I thought of Eric Garner who also said I can’t breathe. Who also pleaded.  Who also was murdered in the street for all to see. 

Though all don’t see. 

An infinitum America. 

The way all of the things on this list of things I am listing are the same thing. 

The way my neighbor hung a skeleton from a tree by its neck for Halloween and he was angry when the township called him to tell him to take it down and when he was telling me about this my response was so tepid he didn’t register I was trying to explain what a person might find offensive about a skeleton hung by its neck from an American tree. 

Did you know about lynching, it would have been simple enough for me to ask him this. 

That woman at Trader Joe’s. I wouldn’t turn around and talk, would not add my voice. Why not? That’s what this list is about. But I haven’t figured anything out yet and I’m almost to the end. 

The way George Floyd calls, Mama. 

The way I feel when I think he could be my son calling Mama with a knee against his neck, digging into his back. And I don’t come get him. I don’t come pull him up off the street and hold his body in my arms the way I do when my sons call my name. From my deepest sleep I do. Go get them when they call me. 

Like I skimmed over it. I didn’t go get my son when he called for me. When my neighbor was talking about how it was just Halloween that was my sons calling for me, both of them and their ancestors on both sides, too. 

Never forget. Speaking of Jewish, speaking of soul. That’s when it was and I missed it. 

I should call this list: Important Things I Missed. Or: The Most Important Thing I Ever Missed. 

Like the way the grandmother at the end of that famous old deep dark fable story, says “Why you’re one of my babies, you’re one of my own children.” 

That old American story. 

She sees everything important she missed when she is about to die.

Declare Juneteenth a National Holiday

By Filed Under: Community Tagged With: ,

We here at Park Slope Reader are active in showing our support to the Black Lives Matter movement, and to one of its many goals in declaring Juneteenth a national holiday.  

Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865; a date nearly 3 years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862. This changed the legal status under federal law for over 3.5 million enslaved African American individuals in the Confederate states from slave to free. By escaping control of the Confederate government, slaves would be permanently free. By the end of the Civil War in 1865, the Union victory brought the proclamation into effect in all former Confederate states, and the remaining slaves were freed by state action or through the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865. 

Isolated from the rest of the states, it wasn’t until that date of June 19th 1865 that Union Troops led by Army General Gordon Granger arrived in the city of Galveston, Texas to read the federal orders that all 250,000 slaves in Texas were now free. The freedom of formerly enslaved people in Texas were given legal status in a series of Texas Supreme Court decisions between 1868 and 1874. 

Church-centered community gathers followed in celebration. In the years to come, festivities around the anniversary spread across Texas and other southern states. The date again gained popularity during the civil rights movements of the 1970s. Today, we see Juneteenth commemorations in major cities to honor not only the anniversary, but to celebrate Black individuals, culture, and community.

These dates are worth noting as the timeline exposes the slow and delayed process of freedom in the United States. That even after 1862, freedom is not fully realized as the country ushered in segregation laws, Jim Crow orders, wealth discrimination, and mass incarceration. 

That is to say freedom and equality must be continuously examined, fought for, and protected.

#BlackLivesMatter was founded in 2013 in response to the acquittal of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin’s murder. Their mission to “eradicate white supremacy and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes. By combating and countering acts of violence, creating space for Black imagination and innovation, and centering Black joy, we are winning immediate improvements in our lives.” 

Now in 2020, we have seen the Black Lives Matter movement brought to the forefront of global attention. After the murder of George Floyd, activists, including us at Park Slope Reader, have come together to demand action now. The road to justice, freedom, and equality is often too long and futile when real individual lives are on the line every day. We actively stand with #BlackLivesMatter to take accountability and dismantle individual, institutional, and systemic racism in our community, country, and around the world. 

One step towards this is the United States Congress recognizing Juneteenth as a national holiday. 

A national holiday by definition “marks a celebration of nationhood, an important event in its nation’s history which radically alters its established self.” The events of June 19th, 1965 have done just that. In a national celebration of Juneteenth, we are further provided the opportunity to acknowledge the past, present, and future of Black history. That Black history is American history. That the emancipation, that took nearly three years for enslaved men and women learn about in Texas, is not only an event that changed history, but is an immediate call to action.

As Toni Morrison stated, “The function of freedom is to free someone else.”

More resources:

Caroline P. Cohen – Honest Engagement

By Filed Under: Reader Profile Tagged With: , , ,

Caroline Cohen – Candidate for Civil Court Judge

When I spoke with Caroline, she was in the midst of another busy day, riding in the car with her family- husband, Steve, and two children, Daschel and CiCi. And even over the phone, I could tell she was full of energy, inspiration, and self-assurance.  Back in April, Caroline won first out of four in the Primary Election for Civil Court Judge. Now, she running unopposed in the November General Election. She contributes this major achievement to her honest engagement with the Brooklyn community.

For the past two years, Caroline has been a trusted Civil Rights Attorney, working for a small, “Feminist Litigation Firm.” What’s that mean? Well, exactly what you would hope. A legal firm that advises and represents those that have been discriminated against in the workplace – be it sexually harassed, because of their status as a caregiver, or for their maternity status. Caroline sites this leap into law and politics as the best professional decision she has ever made. 

She then quotes Gandhi, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” After the 2016 election, Caroline, like many others, felt a call to action. “I couldn’t be as mad as I was and not try to move into a position that could affect greater good.” These intimate feelings motivate many of Caroline’s personal and political engagement decisions. She continuously speaks about how she experiences issues very emotionally and takes things incredibly personally. Ironically, these are often the excuses people have for not electing women into positions of power. But Caroline is unapologetic with her feelings. Aside from showcasing a sense of humanity, she understands them as an opportunity to translate emotions into a passion and dedication for positive change. “I was filled with rage. But still, you turn that into something else. It would be a greater tragedy just to take those feelings and be like ‘Oh well, this is the world we live in now.’ No, you take it and you do more with it.” 

Soon after, she called her brother saying, “Well, I guess I am running for office now.”

Caroline with her campaign team including NYS Senate Candidate Josue Pierre

Similarly, Caroline’s desire to move into law came from her own mother’s inability to pursue higher education and a professional career as an attorney. Caroline states that the death of her mother, Carol, was the most defining moment of her life, because of the parallel similarities she saw between her moment of loss and her mother’s. Carol had applied to law school, but ultimately her father did not support it, saying “You have been educated enough. That’s it. Hard stop.” In the end, she moved on to be a successful businesswoman, but still, this loss was continuously prominent in the determination to pass on strength to her children. Caroline says, “She saw a lot in me what she saw in herself – a focus, and dedication, and just a belief that you can do it.” 

Amongst the great values inherited from her mother is the belief that “you don’t take shit from anybody.” Caroline too wishes to deliver this energetic self-assurance to others. She speaks to me about the need to claim your identity and power. “Be fearless when you’re speaking with people who are dismissive of you.” I can image Caroline working with her clients, giving them the same spirited motivation that her words project; providing them the opportunity, access, and tools to pursue that which other’s have tried to take away. And Caroline brings this ferocious devotion to all aspects of her life.  

“This cycle I hope to give to my clients, that I hope to give to my children, that I hope to give to my constituents is that if you come before me as a judge you will be heard, if you are my client I will fight for you, if you’re my child I will empower you to speak for yourself and speak for others.”

Of course, the transition has not always been easy. It continues to involve months of long days as it was never an option to take off of work for Caroline – she says, “My ladies need me.” So while holding her 9 to 5 hours, she would campaign on the subways in the morning, knock on doors in the evenings, and end her day with team meetings between 9:30 and 11 PM.  An almost unbelievable work schedule for a mother raising a 6 and 4 ¾-year-old. But as Caroline states, “I am the definition of ‘It takes a village.’ And when I ask her children if they think it’s cool to see their mom talking with all these people and doing this big job for the city, rising pre-schooler CiCi replies, “Pretty much.”

Caroline and daughter, CiCi speaking with friend

In the same way that the community has supported her, as Civil Court Judge, Caroline is focused on giving back and engaging the community. “And not just during the campaign, I think that’s a bunch of garbage. You have to be dedicated to reach out to all the corners of the community if you are going be a public servant and seek to represent them.” Caroline has made a major effort to connect with Brooklyn individuals in order to understand the nuances of each community. For example, providing comprehensive relief to the multi-decade affordable housing crisis or directly dealing with Islamaphobia in the Muslim community. She has been endorsed by Brooklyn Young Democrats, LGBTQ organizations- the Lambda Independent Democrats of Brooklyn and the Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club, and the Shirley Chisholm Democratic Club. “What I can bring [to Civil Court Judge position] is a perspective and understanding of whom my constituents are. And it comes from living here. I have lived in Flatbush for 10 years. It’s a great joy to me and my family to continue to be involved in the community.”

As part of her community engagement Caroline co-founded Ditmas Art, a mixed media arts organization focused on political discourse. So, we wrapped up our conversation with a question that as a media creator I often ask others: What do you believe the goal of art and media should be? For me, the goal is to create work the provokes empathy. Caroline began by telling me a story of a former Art History professor who hated Steven Speilberg films, because “They told you how to feel.” However, she finds a distinction between this control and engaging one’s audience to make them think in a new way. She states, “It’s all about opening up dialogue. And that was really the point of opening up this art salon in our house. Because we were a community who were bereft from the 2016 election. And I use that word purposefully.”

She again recalls the night of the 2016 election with the deeply personal memory of retreating to her upstairs bathroom, so her son would not have to see her cry. In those moments, fear took hold equivalent to that when she learned her mother had stage four metastatic cancer. “It felt like the world had shifted under my feet. So I wanted to create a space for people to bring their ideas… And to allow them to begin to formulate thoughts. Because people were grieving. And it was an opportunity for people to grieve.”

“So, I think, in its best form art is just an opportunity for people to allow their thoughts to flow.”

Caroline’s thoughts, too, flow from her with purpose and energy as she speaks with me about these challenges, accomplishments, and sentiments. All which motivate her to bring that same confidence to others- confidence not only that she will fulfill her role as Civil Court Judge, but promise that in doing so every individual will gain a stronger, louder, and recognized voice. In our conversation, again and again, Caroline would proudly proclaim, “I love what I do!” Indulging in stories of the people, places, and experience that brought her to where she is today.

“I am very aware that I am indebted to the community. I owe everything to this community. It is helping me raise my children. It provided me a platform to meet my boss- who I met in my oldest child’s moms group. It has given me a spiritual stronghold in moments of political disbelief. And that love and dedication will translate to love and dedication on the bench.”

To learn more about Caroline’s Campaign go to cohenforjudge2019.com