Why I’m Running

New York is the place that welcomed me as a young immigrant and allowed me to feel at home in a new country. New York is the place where I found the safety to love who I love, to be queer and proud. New York is the place where my children were born, where they first looked at the sky. New York is the place where I learned about the incredible power that is unleashed when workers organize to win dignity, when young people band together to fight for their dreams, when people tell their stories, build community and power, with love at the center.

New York should be a place where everyone, no matter who you are or where you’re from, can live with dignity. But right now, our state is falling short of that promise. 

New York is one of the richest states in the richest nations in the world, but if you are a working person, you don’t feel it and haven’t before or during the pandemic. Housing is impossible to find, eldercare and childcare out of reach, electricity bills are unaffordable, gun violence is rising, public transit crumbling, good-paying union jobs hard to come by, and immigrant workers have been left behind.

The pandemic has made all of these issues worse—particularly for Black, brown, and immigrant communities who have been hit hardest. Meanwhile, the billionaires and the powerful are doing better than ever. And we have a Governor and Lieutenant Governor who seem more interested in serving the interests of the billionaires and corporations than the interests of working people.

I have dedicated the last 20 years to building power rooted in working class communities.  My work has been animated by the certainty that a new, more just nation is struggling to be born. And that her arrival becomes more possible every time immigrant youth tell their stories and articulate their dreams; every time Black women lead us to victory in a hard fought election; every time low-wage workers win dignity at work; every time someone joins a march for the first time; and every time poor and working class families win better schools, housing and healthcare. The arrival of a more just nation, a more just New York, becomes more possible when the very people who have been silenced and relegated to the margins of our democracy build power together, and use that power to dismantle the structures of exclusion and exploitation from below.