BA: Could you tell a little bit about yourself, your background and your ties to Brooklyn?
AR: Sure. I was born and raised in Brooklyn. I was born in Cumberland Hospital. My parents are from the Dominican Republic. I grew up with welfare, food stamps, Section 8, Medicaid, you name it. My family had to take advantage of it all just to give me a fair shot. It’s why I’m standing here before you as a council member and a candidate. Brooklyn gave me everything. Gave me my education from public schools.
I grew up in the south side of Williamsburg, so I’m representing the district that I’ve lived in my entire life. So it’s been a dream.
BA: My second question is what got you into politics?
AR: I went to a college in Syracuse that had the eighth lowest proficiency rates for English, arts, and math in the state. One of my mentors told me that these kids need tutors that look like us.
So I helped start an organization called Band of Brothers on a New Direction. A lot of people came to tutor the kids because of the work that we did. And it’s when I kind of really felt that I could take on a leadership role and help people.
When I graduated, I started working for ACORN, which was an organization that does organizing. It’s what Barack Obama did. I really wanted to emulate Obama when I came out of college. I worked for a year and a half on a campaign to better the conditions of childcare providers.
Then I cut my hair, put on a suit and went to go see Councilwoman Diane Reyna for a job. I got hired and worked my way up from organizer in Ridgewood to a budget person to a legislator person. I finally became her chief of staff. I ran for her seat 7 years ago and won!
BA: Can you talk about your experience as a councilmember.
AR: I came into the City Council to do two things. Environmental justice and police reform. I was able to pass two pieces of legislation.
One is the Waste Equity Bill, which reduced the amount of trucks running through our district — lowering the noise and air pollution, and the deaths that occurred in accidents with garbage trucks.
I also worked on Commercial Waste Zoning Legislation that will remove one million miles of truck traffic from New York City. It is arguably the most meaningful piece of environmental justice legislation that we’ve passed in the Council. I feel like I addressed that issue in my community, doing it in a holistic way that will improve the entire city.
As a young man I was stop and frisked several times and felt helpless. I wanted to help do something about that. We were able to pass the Right to Know Act. It makes it so that police officers have to let you know of your constitutional right to deny searches when they’re consent searches.
The other part is the ID Bill. After any investigative stop, a police officer now has to give you their card with their name, rank and precinct. If you feel like any injustice was done or you want to compliment that officer, you now have their information.
Something else. COVID happened and I was able to pass outdoor dining legislation where we are now re-imagining our streetscape.
BA: I am curious about how you feel about term limits. If it weren’t for term limits, would you continue to want to stay on as a council member?
AR: I’m not sure. It depends on what was happening throughout the city. There’s so many variables as to why somebody runs. I’ve done eight years of work here. There’s somebody running for my seat that I support in Jennifer Gutierrez, who I think is going to do a good job. Again, I’m not sure what I would have done in a scenario where there weren’t term limits.
BA: Kind of going off of that. What led you led you to run for Brooklyn Borough President?
AR: Yeah, so term limits is a part of it, but look, I care deeply about service. The Marty Markowitz in me cares deeply about making sure we promote Brooklyn as the center of the universe. I really want to make sure that I show up for Brooklyn.
I don’t want to hear about Seattle and San Francisco and these European countries doing things before we do it. They should be modeling after our work. So I want Brooklyn to really lead the way… Not only in how we shape our borough, but our city, our country, and the world.
BA: An issue in Red Hook is these last mile warehouses coming in like the UPS facility and Amazon who will bring a lot of big trucks. How would you go about addressing that as borough president?
AR: Yeah, there’s a new reality that we’re all dealing with during COVID and definitely post COVID, which is a lot of people are buying stuff on the internet. Moving freight is extremely important. The first thing we need to make sure is that all of these vehicles are electric vehicles.
The next thing is we need to make sure we’re taking care of these workers, that they’re being paid an appropriate wage. That they’re given paid time off, vacation time, health care.
We can solve those problems through good policy. But we need to accept the reality that the way we are receiving goods or purchasing goods warrants an expansion of these vehicles and that we have and we can try to make it efficient and worthwhile.
BA: Another suggestion in Red Hook is using the waterways more as far as transporting goods? Is that something you’ve thought about yet?
AR: The city of New York has moved to almost exclusively moving trash through barge and using our waterways in a meaningful way. If there was an opportunity to expand our access to waterways through building and just really activating our rivers, of course, I support that.
But I don’t think our waterfront should be exclusive to just commerce. There should be access to the waterways for the general public. I’m a big supporter of passenger ferries.
Expanding ferries to neighborhoods that are poor and more diverse is extremely important because right now ferries seem to be more about access for affluent waterfront developers than they are for everyday New Yorkers.
BA: So what’s your game plan once you are in office?
AR: The first thing is day one—when we get in—we’re going to start working on outfitting every single public hospital with a state of the art birthing center. Black women are dying at eight times the rate as any other women in New York during childbirth.
Making sure that the facilities in poor neighborhoods are comparable to the best hospitals in the world.
I want Brooklyn to be the safest borough in the city to have a baby. So that’s the first thing we’re going to do.
We also are going to start doing comprehensive planning. I want to have a community board-led process to plan for the future of every neighborhood.
It’s going to take a collective effort from all of Brooklyn, including Sheepshead Bay and these places that haven’t seen a rezoning for over 60 years. That’s another thing we’re going to do, work for our land use.
The last thing is reforming community boards. I think community boards have a lot of value. There consist of a lot of people that have spent their blood, sweat and tears in volunteer positions to help their neighborhoods.
I want to give them more information—have training and forums to inform them on the issues. We’ll be doing a lot of work on community boards and we’re very excited about that.
BA: Thank you, it’s great to hear. Shifting gears, can you talk about what separates you from the crowd?
AR: I believe I’m the true progressive in this race. A lot of people want to use the term progressive. But what I think progressive is, is somebody that has focused all their life on helping people that are less fortunate. Making sure that we deal with the root causes of problems and not just put band-aids on the issues that are very important.
I feel that my experience as a poor black boy from the south side has really put me in a position where I’m not empathetic of what’s happening because I have the real experience.
But also, I’m a coalition maker. I’m looking to appeal to all areas of Brooklyn, not just my base and I think I can do that. I’ve shown in my history as a Council member that I can bring groups of people together to solve complicated and tough problems.
BA: Lastly, I’d like to turn it over to you. Is there anything else you’d like to say to the readers?
AR: We’ve never had a truly progressive borough president and I truly believe, deeply believe that Brooklyn is the most progressive county in the country. It’s about time our BP reflects that. I’m hoping when the time comes that I can be the representative for all of Brooklyn and for the folks in Red Hook.
