51 Council Members in 52 Weeks: District 42, Charles Barron

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. In a speech just a few minutes ago, New York City Mayor Eric Adams declared a state of emergency, what he called an asylum seeker state of emergency, and he called for urgent aid from federal and state governments, the federal government, and the New York State government. Here's a minute of the mayor declaring that state of emergency.

Mayor Eric Adams: In the next few weeks we'll be opening a large humanitarian emergency response and relief center on Randall's Island that will safely house hundreds of people who have found themselves in New York City after their long journey from our southern border. I will be there to welcome them and to stay with them to hear their stories, but unless we take immediate action, that center will be full in days and we will have to open another and another and another even as winter weather arrives.

As a result of that reality, today, I am declaring a state of emergency in the city of New York and issuing an executive order. This executive order will formally direct all relevant agencies to coordinate their efforts to construct the humanitarian relief centers. We're also suspending certain land use requirements to expedite this process.

Brian Lehrer: Mayor Adams just a few minutes ago. With that, now we continue our year-long series 51 Council Members in 52 Weeks as we welcome every member of city council touching every neighborhood of the city and this year when most of the council is new because of term limits and its majority female for the first time. The council member we're about to talk to already had homelessness and housing as among the issues he most wanted to talk with us today.

We will definitely include now the state of emergency over housing for asylum seekers that the mayor just declared. For those of you who've been following this series and hearing all these young freshman council members in elected office for the first time we've been talking to, this addition is going to be different because now we arrive in District 42 covering the people in all our parts of East New York, New Lots, Spring Creek, Remsen Village, and Starrett City, also East Flatbush in Brooklyn, and some non-human constituents in parts of the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge.

The council member there is Charles Barron whose official bio page begins with the fact that he's been a community activist for over 50 years, beginning when he joined the Black Panther Party in 1969. Unlike the council majority right now, he is hardly a freshman. He served three terms in council, 12 years from 2001 to 2013, then was elected to the state assembly from the area when he was term-limited out of council then and last year returned or now has returned to city council, which he was allowed to do because term limits only apply to consecutive terms.

After a gap, you can come back if the people will have you, and the people of Eastern Brooklyn have certainly shown over the years that they will have Charles Barron. My secret sources also tell me that today is his 72nd birthday. Council member, belated congratulations on your return to council and welcome back to WNYC.

Charles Barron: Well, thank you so much, Brian, and I appreciate you mentioning my 72nd birthday, 72 years on Earth. I got to say 40 of those years was with the love of my life, that's Inez Barron, my wife, and then I'm also honored to have the same birthday as the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and Amiri Baraka, the poet, [unintelligible 00:04:03] and activist and revolutionary from Newark. This is a great day for me.

Brian Lehrer: We mentioned earlier in the show, and we'll come back to it later when we talk about the Nobel Peace Prize being awarded today, that today also happens to be Vladimir Putin's birthday. He's two years younger than you, but we won't put him in the same breath as Amira Baraka and Elijah Muhammad.

Charles Barron: Okay.

Brian Lehrer: I thought we would largely do a different segment than we've been doing mostly in this series with all those new members. If you're willing, we'll get your big sweep of history take on New York City in addition to some of the current issues, but could you react first to the mayor declaring that state of emergency as he calls it because of the asylum seekers?

Charles Barron: Well, we had a state of emergency before the asylum seekers came here. The homeless situation is totally out of control in New York City and communities like mine are oversaturated with homeless shelters. Other communities in the Upper East Side and other white communities don't have nearly as much. The Fair Share Act says that you're not supposed to oversaturate communities yet, white communities get away, would not happen to do the responsible thing and house homeless.

It is a state of emergency on top of an already existing state of emergency. The way out I think is that we got to really look at any new housing coming in and if they would've listened to us 10, 20 years ago, we wouldn't have the homeless crisis we have now. Every developer that gets subsidies, that's their welfare. When we poor people get free money from the government is welfare, when they get it is something cute subsidies.

Either we are all on subsidies or we are all on welfare, but when they get subsidized money from the government, they should at least have to commit to 30% to 35% for the formerly homeless and get them into permanent housing. I think that's one of the ways we could have been out of this mess by now and if they had done that 30 years ago, we wouldn't have that problem. I think that should happen.

Then in addition to that, areas and communities that have not shared the burden or the responsibility of housing the homeless, they should look at those areas. Then finally, on a larger scale, if American imperialism would stop exploiting these countries and putting in dictators and creating coup d'étas and making the political scene in many of these countries in Central and South America and Africa and in the Caribbean, if they would stop their imperialistic foreign policy, maybe people would be prosperous where they live.

Brian Lehrer: In the clip that we played of the mayor, it was a lot about the tent city that he's going to erect on Randall's Island. I see city council has proposed its own housing plan for the migrants to avoid a tent city for some of them at all. Of course, this started in Orchard Beach in the Bronx, and then when that flooded, just as advocates predicted that it would, then the mayor started moving it to Randall's Island. Where is council, where are you on what to do in the short term while they deal or don't deal with those longstanding issues that you were just discussing?

Charles Barron: Well, in the short term, they should go into communities. I notice in Orchard Beach, the whites didn't want it and didn't like it, and when they protest, it doesn't happen. They need to have other communities that are not saturated like Brownsville and East New York and Harlem and all of our communities. They need to start building and housing people in places, not in these tents, but in some decent housing in those areas that have not traditionally borne their responsibility of housing the homeless.

Brian Lehrer: Are we all talking too much about the tent city? As I understand it, it's only for about 500 people. The mayor have said hundreds in that clip when the recent arrivals totaled 14,000, many of them seeking housing. What about everyone else?

Charles Barron: Well, that's going to be a major issue. Once again, the conflict is going to be with people who are already homeless here. We are already in a crisis here, and so you power that crisis on top of a crisis and then you got to look at how we are developing housing and real affordable housing for the short range and for the long range. As long as you never deal with the long-range and say that these developments that get subsidies, 30% to 40% of it should be for the formerly homeless. Until that happens, we are always going to have emergency situation that is almost incredibly difficult to handle.

Brian Lehrer: One more thing about this before we move on to some other issues for now. The mayor was asked on New York One this week if he thinks Governor Abbott of Texas is targeting cities with Black mayors to bus migrants too. Here's what Mayor Adams said.

Mayor Adams: I don't know if it's Black mayors or if it's just going to northern cities, but something is wrong. We have thousands of cities in this country. Why are we specifically targeting Washington, Chicago, and New York? There's something wrong with that.

Brian Lehrer: Do you have any take on that?

Charles Barron: Yes. I think that we live in a colonial capitalist system, a colonial capitalist two-party system that's banked by Wall Street and the real estate industry. That is the root of the problem. The Republicans don't maneuver the Democrats. To me, it's Tweedledee and Tweedledum. It's one a little better than the other but they both support an exploitative capitalist system which creates homelessness, poverty, and a myriad of so many other issues. What they did is they out-maneuver them.

Instead of at a state like Texas that has plenty land and plenty places, they're sending them to what you call sanctuary cities. Of course, race is always a factor in this but the bottom line is capitalism at its worse or as the great mighty sparrow say capitalism's gone mad. I think that's at the root of this problem that we don't have in the richest country in the world and one of the richest cities in the world with $101 billion budget and a state budget of 220 billion that we can't house people is incredible, especially in those countries that we are creating the political strife and poverty in because of imperialistic exploitation.

Brian Lehrer: My guest is City Council Member, Charles Barron from New Lots East New York, Spring Creek, Remsen Village, Starrett City, East Flatbush, District 42, week 42 of our yearlong series, 51 Council Members in 52 Weeks in which we're interviewing and taking A calls for every member of New York City Council in this year when most of them are new because of term limits and it's majority female for the first time. We can take some phone calls for Council Member Barron, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or Tweet @Brian Lehrer.

One of the things we're asking all the council members in this series is to describe who lives in your district by any demographics you choose and how that has changed over the time you've lived there. For you who has been in public life since 1969 and city council elected office since 2001, including your assembly years, who lives there and how has the district changed since you first represented it 21 years ago? How would you describe that?

Charles Barron: We are very, very excited about our district is up-and-coming. Yes, we have highest crime, highest risk homeless shelters, and people always talk about that but there's one of the greatest secrets of East New York that's never told is the accomplishments, is the fact that we are number one in building affordable housing. The fact of the matter, we stopped gentrification. When I first came into the city council, my district was about 65% Black and about 15-20%, Latino, Latina. Now we are 90% Black and brown.

We're one of the few districts that is not gentrified, unlike Bedford–Stuyvesant and Harlem and some other places and Brooklyn. We are not gentrified. We are very proud of that. We had some studies that said we are number one in building a real affordable housing. I think what happens, Brian, is that people don't understand where a neighborhood is gentrified is through the AMI, the area median income.

When we have council members who allow this 80/20 formula, 80% market, and 20% so-called affordable to happen that's when you become gentrified. We are half homeowners and half in public housing. We are a community that is 90% of the, maybe 95% of the people in East New York are good people, but all we see is the crime, the shootings. We don't see the fact that we renovated 7 parks for over 40 million more than most in the entire city.

We had 300 to 400 people out of homeless shelters into permanent housing because the city council has the power to determine what the housing policy is going to be for those that come to build housing in our neighborhoods. We stopped Walmart from coming in out there in Gateway. We have thousands of jobs for our people. If you go through some of the commercial spots in the Gateway Mall, you'll see, ask the Black young people what their zip code is.

They're going to give you the zip code of our neighborhood. We were able to build three new schools, Brian from the ground up. $88 million schools from the ground up and we have over $50 million in scholarships who are CUNY students. We've freed, when I was in the state, three political prisoners and we had the first historic bill passed in the state assembly on reparations. Even if you check the crime stats, not Barron Stats, but the crime stats and the 75th precinct, you will see that since 2001 to 2021 and just about every category crime has gone down.

That's because we build housing, we created jobs and we also had a group called Man Up! Inc., Andre T. Mitchell and they came and did a lot of balance interruption work and we were able to even bring crime down even though we have some of the highest in the city. Those were some of the accomplishments that we were able to achieve in our district, which maintained a lot of people are coming to East New York regardless of what they feel the crime is because they can't afford to live anywhere else. Brian, real quick.

Brian Lehrer: Yet, we still talk about this [crosstalk]. Go ahead.

Charles Barron: Where can you get a one-bedroom apartment, nicely done, good square footage for $700, $800 a month rent? You can't even get a studio in Bed-Stuy and some other places for less than $2,500 a month rent but in my beloved East New York, we've been able to get studio departments at $400, $500 and have the homeless in some apartments for $250, $300 a month rent. That is unheard of and that's why East New York is on the rise and East New York is not gentrified.

Brian Lehrer: I hear all those things and yet, we still talk about vast racial disparities in wealth and income. If you look certainly by race, that's true within New York City still. Probably if we look district by district, that would encompass your district as being pretty low relative to other parts of the city in terms of wealth and income and educational outcomes and who has what kinds of jobs. Everyone saw who the essential workers were and working-class jobs when COVID broke out. How much are conditions similar to 2001, and how much has really gotten better or worse as you see the long sweep of history having represented the city and also larger ideas in politics for so long?

Charles Barron: As I said, East New York has an area median income of $36,000 for a family of 3. That's why when developers come in my district and say they're going to build affordable housing, affordability as defined by HUD, which is 80% of the AMI of New York City, the Area Median Income of New York City is $104,000. Now, 80% of that is $80,000. that is not affordable for East New York. We made sure that 80% of the projects that come into our district is meeting the income ban of East New York.

Most of it is 50, 40, 30, $25,000 household income. We were able to do that and yes, the reason why we got to keep the rent low and the income requirement low is because this city, this state, this nation has not dealt with the poverty that colonial capitalism has created. It's high in communities of color, particularly Black and brown communities but capitalism at its root has prioritized profit over the people. The banking industry has profit tremendously.

Wall Street, during the pandemic in 2021, they had a $51 billion profit, which is why some unexpected revenue came in in 2022 in which I think the Mayor did not have to cut $300 million from the Department of Education and 3% from every city agency. Then the police have an $11 billion budget and a $2.9 billion capital budget, 50,000 police, 35,000 uniform offices, and 15 civilian offices.

Yet, crime is up through the roof, 40, 41% because the answer to crime is not more policing, more jails. Yes, we should transfer money from that bloated police budget to mental health, to job development, workforce development programs, and anti-poverty programs. People don't commit crimes because there's not enough police, they couldn't commit crimes because they're desperate. We need jobs, not jails.

Brian Lehrer: Although a lot of people who voted for you for city council last year from your district also voted for Mayor Adams who was running on a strengthen the police kind of platform. How do you understand the Charles Barron, Eric Adams voters?

Charles Barron: I don't think people go to the polls looking at Charles Barron versus Eric Adams. They go to the poll for name recognition and for people who they think did some things positive, that's why people go to the polls. When they looked at all of the candidates that were running for mayor, they were more familiar with Eric Adams. It wasn't because they supported a lot of his policies and that they wanted to see more police and not more jobs. I don't think there's a person in East New York would want more police and less jobs.

I think they did it because they were familiar with him. We are trying to say to our people that once we get in positions because there's a lot of Black faces in high places, I call it Neocolonialism, which is the new way to colonize us, is for the white power structure from Wall Street and the whites that really head up the Democratic party and the fundraisers and all of that stuff put Black faces in high places and maintain the same policies that were driven by the capitalists or the white politicians so the complexion changes, but the direction doesn't change.

I think people will vote for vote that they are familiar with and he's familiar with the people in Brownsville and East New York and other places. It's not like they say, "Oh, we'll vote for Eric the capitalist, and also Charles the socialist." I think they say they know both of them and they vote.

Brian Lehrer: This is WNYC FM-HD and AM New York, WNJT-FM 88.1 Trenton, WNJP 88.5 Sussex, WNJY 89.3 Netcon and WNJO 90.3 Toms River. We are on New York and New Jersey public radio and live streaming at WNYC.org. Let me get one phone call on the mayor declaring an asylum seekers state of emergency or a state of emergency in the city because of the influx of asylum seekers this morning and it's Pete in Brooklyn. You're on WNYC with Council Member Charles Barron. Hi, Pete.

Pete: Council member I agree with everything you said, you're spot on. I think it's fantastic. What I want to say to you guys is that the situation right now with immigration is out of control. The biggest problem I see right now, at least on the ground here in New York is a lot of friends of mine who I know very personally have been in and out of the homeless system. They're telling me about how people are getting thrown out of the shelters to make space for people moving in.

A big thing I know from immigration lawyers I've been working with recently is that the people coming up from Central America right now are being promised from their own countries that they're going to come here and get work permits, Green Cards immediately, immediate housing and that incentivizes them to come up here. When they get up here, all of a sudden, they owe $25,000 to $30,000 to cartels, loan sharks that they have to pay off within six months of getting here.

They don't really have an option except to find a way to make that money. If the US government and the federal government can straight out start telling people, "Look, this is a bunch of lies that you're being fed, this isn't going to work, you really need to think about your family," because these people come up here. If they don't have that money, something's going to happen to their family back home and this is crazy town.

Finally, I'm not Democrat or Republican anymore, I'm independent. One big change that can happen is they have to start processing people again at the border and not sending them on buses and just letting them loose because unfortunately, it's very hard to make the system work when you just show up to where you're going to show up to. The fact is that it's not Greg Abbott who sent the most migrants up here, it's the mayor of El Paso, who's a Democrat mayor, that was in the New York Post. Thank you very much.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much, Pete. I did see that article in the New York Post. No matter how many Abbott has sent, assuming the reporting is accurate, more thousands have been sent by the Democratic mayor of El Paso. People wanted to come here, but he's arranging for it. It sounds councilman like Pete agrees with the larger point that Abbott is trying to make by sending a lot of migrants to New York, which is to say, "Hey, we've got a problem in this country, we have to deal with it in Texas. By the accident of geography, we're near the border."

If everybody else is feeling the stress that Mayor Adams is now reflecting of having so many people arrive relatively all at once, maybe we should be asking the Biden administration not to let so many people arrive all at once. What do you say to that?

Charles Barron: That's one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it is maybe the Biden administration should adjust this foreign policy and stop the imperialistic exploitation of these countries that's causing people to come in the first place. Secondly, if you got $41 billion out of nowhere for Ukraine and every time they need more money for Ukraine, it's there. When the Haitians came here, you was sending them back and disparaging them and calling them all kinds of stuff.

I think the federal government needs to put in the same emergency money they did for Ukraine, they need to do that for this issue around immigrants. What they need to do is make sure that a state like Texas and New York has the money to deal with it. Texas wouldn't even have to send them if they had the funds to deal with it and the space to develop homes for people.

I think that this is a country that started off with colonialism, 13 colonies that came here, stole the indigenous people's land and then stole us from Africa to build the capitalist economy, evolved from feudalism to capitalism, and now all of a sudden the very people that you ripped off Texas was Mexico, you ripped off Mexico from indigenous people. Now, we don't have money for folk that whose land you stole, whose countries you've exploited and supported dictators. I think America has the money to resolve this, but it's capitalistic greed that's creating the crisis.

Brian Lehrer: One point of pushback on that, that people might make is in this case most of the migrants are from Venezuela, which is a left-wing dictatorship. How can you hang it on US colonialism or capitalism?

Charles Barron: Because imperialism is destabilizing Venezuela, the people elected president of Venezuela, they elected them and imperialism under Trump especially and on the prior presidents, they first tried to get rid of Hugo Chavez, the people had to bring him back in, 2 million people brought them back in. They go in there to destabilize the government, create a right-ring racist element and have people believing that the very country that increased the literacy rate, increased the land ownership rate of the people that had the people involved in the democratic process to do a new constitution and they denying them food, denying them medicine and then say, "Look, the government did that."

I think imperialism is really what is destabilizing Venezuela. It is not socialism. It is not the Madero government. It is imperialism that's not only in Venezuela, but also in Haiti. What the Clintons did in Haiti is shameful and it's the same in many other countries. You can take that one little isolated incident and say you putting that on the government, that's on imperialism and it's happening all over. Haiti is a rich country. Haiti's not poor. It's an exploited country, but it's rich and Haiti's paying France reparations? What hypocrisy,

Brian Lehrer: On a lighter note, to wrap this up, we're asking all the city council members, really inviting all the city council members for the end of these segments to bring a show and tell item from your district, something a lot of other people might not know about but you might like them to know about. In your district 42 in Brooklyn, what you got for show and tell?

Charles Barron: We are so excited about Sankofa Park. Sankofa Park is right behind the New Lots Avenue Library on New Lots Avenue between Barbey and Schenck. By the way, Schenck, Barbey, Van Sickling, all names of slaveholders that were formerly in East New York. In that area where the library is in Schenck Park, Slaveholder, we changed that name to Sankofa Park, which means going back and study your history so you can move forward and capture your future. We are going to have a brand new park and it's going to be built where a former African burial ground was.

In 1898 they destroyed our ancestors who were buried there, destroyed their bones and everything and built a school and then they built a library in 1957. We found some remains, very few and so we are going to preserve those remains, have a brand new park and we are getting a brand new library. That is going to be our cultural hub. We call it African Burial Ground Square. Right now, a lot of negative activity is happening in the park, but in another 12 to 16 months, a brand new park.

A cultural hub named after our ancestors and our African principles of Sankofa and so we are very proud that once that new library comes and that new park comes, it's going to be the cultural hub of the city. This is in East New York that African people built. The Portuguese and all of the Dutch and all of them who came, they did not know anything about agriculture. They were fur traders.

They stole a land from the Canarsie, so-called Indians. We call them the Canarsie people, the Indigenous people. They stole their land from the Algonquian-speaking folk, the Lenape. They stole us to build East New York. If you see East New York names of streets, those are slaveholders' streets, and we are now changing that so that it'll be a cultural hold that highlights the Africans who built East New York's Foundation.

Brian Lehrer: City Council member Charles Barron, the member from District 42 covering East New York, New Lots, Spring Creek, Remsen Village, Starrett City, and East Flatbush, all our parts of all those areas on week 42 of 51 Council Members in 52 Weeks series this year as we go district by district. Thanks so much, council member for joining the series, and happy birthday.

Charles Barron: Thank you, Brian. I appreciate that. Also, the Black Panther Party in 1966 was developed in October as well. I still am a panther in my heart and I still promote the 10-point program of the Black Panther Party, which is asking for the very things we African now. Healthcare, stop police brutality. We want to control the destiny of our communities and control all the institutions that govern our lives. We want freedom and self-determination, so I'm still a panther.

Brian Lehrer: Still a panther, and still coming on the show. Charles Barron. Thank you so much.

Charles Barron: Thank you, Brian.

 

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