Reflections on the 2021 NYC Election

to make that time. And so for me, dear friends here on woke F, I am going to be taking a much needed vacation so that I can rest and recharge as we head into what I believe is going to be one of the craziest falls we've ever seen.

I have left you with eight amazing episodes that we have recorded back in twenty twenty one with some of the most thoughtful, engaging and insightful commentary that looks at our politics, our spiritual nature, our emotional well being, and a look inside frankly with some of the guests that we are bringing to all of you. These conversations have been heard by our amazing Patreon supporters who get video

episodes every single day. Because of their belief and financial support of woke F throughout the years, and so I'm really excited to bring all of you across all the platforms that you listen to woke F daily on these episodes and these interviews that I think will be enticing

to all of you. They hit on all of the major topics that we consistently discuss here on woke F, from racism to gender inequality, to police misconduct to wealth inequality, which my God, and the need and the need and the need upmost for spiritual connection and wellness practices that allow us to successfully maneuver all of the things that have been thrown at us over the past couple of years.

And so, friends, while I will be out from the show, I will not be out of sight for the next several days, and so you can continue to follow me on Instagram and on Twitter at D two Cents, D E two c E n TF. Of course, I will be dropping in with my two cents and you can check me out on TikTok, where I'm sure certain that I will drop a few videos in the next couple of days, and there you can find me at Danielle Moody Underscore. I hope that you all enjoy these next

fantastic episodes that we have. Do drop your thoughts in the comment section, do hit me up in the socials. Just don't draw my attention to anything that is terrible because I'm taking a break from the news. But dear friends, I really do hope that you enjoy these next eight episodes and I will see you with brand new episodes after Labor Day. It's no secret that the news is

horsepill hard to swallow. Thankfully, there's The Bituation Room podcast hosted by comedian and commentator Francesca free Er and Tini for a lighter take on the heavy stuff. Each week, the Bituation Room brings you progressive comedians, experts, and activists to break down the issues in a way that won't just leave you crying under a weighted blanket. Get The Bituation Room on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and streaming on YouTube and Twitch. Hey there, I want to tell you

about another podcast I think you'll love. The Brown Girl's Guide to Politics, hosted by a Shanty Gohler, the president of Emerge. BGG is the one stop shop for women of color who want to hear and talk about the world of politics join a Shanty this season as she talks to incredible women of color who are changing the face of politics and tackling some of the most important issues facing the United States, from reproductive justice to voting rights,

to climate change and more. Tune in every Tuesday wherever you get your podcasts, Folks. I am so excited to welcome to wike F. I believe for the first time Maya Wiley, who is a friend of mine and you know her as a candidate for New York City mayor. Maya. New York City has been the epicenter for a lot over the past year. You know, at the height of the pandemic. And I fear to say the height because we see that things are changing all around the globe

and all around Europe. But I will say the height. As of twenty twenty, New York City was the epicenter for crises, and a little bit before that, you decided

to put your hat in the ring for mayor. I want to know before we start in pandemic talk, what howd you decide after your life of living in New York City, working in New York City, working in different administrations, decide to throw your hat in the ring decide that now was the time that New York City was not only ready for its second right, which is just embarrassing, its second black mayor, but what would be its first

female mayor and first Black female mayor. Well, first of all, Danielle, I have to say, it's wonderful to see you, thanks to COVID. It has been way too long, and it's a pleasure to be here at long last. Yeah. Look, you know what can I tell you? Before COVID hit, this city already was experiencing a pandemic. It was a pandemic of an affordability crisis. It was a pandemic of

systemic racism. It was a pandemic of division and spiritual exhaustion that then was deepened, expanded, fast tracked when COVID struck. And I think, like so many other women in general, and women of color, black women in particular, after watching for years, you know of the need for much more transformational leadership, leadership that pulls us together but also says we're pulling together to do things differently, you know, because it can't be that we're simply going back to the

same old toolbox to fix problems. Those tools were never addressed to fix, and that when COVID hit, and when so many of our communities, black communities, Latino Asian remember that New York City as the largest Indigenous population Native American population urban in the country, that it was our communities, all of us were decimated, right, And we should say that out loud, because it is true. We're traumatized as a city where every aspect of our economy has been

devastated as a city. But it is also true that like in every crisis, every single one, whether it was the Great Recession of two thousand and eight or Hurricane Sandy, that we are always the communities there hit hardest first and with the longest lasting impacts. And we are so critical to this city being what it is, being the vibrant, innovative place it is, being the exciting place it is, and that we have been at risk of losing that

for a very long time. And I just as someone who's spent my entire career committ into dismantling structural racism, to focusing on what pulls us out of you know, the crises that are a crisis of creation. It's not necessarily natural condition, it's one we recreate and we can change. And you know, I just said it's time. It's time for change, and I stepped in to make it. You

know there, I love the term that you use. Just a a kind of spiritual pandemic, right, A kind of hopelessness I feel sets in in varied communities around New York City. I mean, as it is as it has been across the country, but definitely within New York City. People look to New York right as as a beacon,

I think in many ways. And yet what the COVID nineteen crisis did was open our eyes in so many ways to the systemic forces that have been at play that have kept many marginalized communities down right and under the thumb of egregious systems that would have them there. For me, I worked in New York City. I worked under Mayor Blueberg in the public education system largest in

the country. And you know what I noticed as we are going through this pandemic is just how many young people out of the one point two million children that are in the New York City public school system don't

have access to internet. So how were they going to be able to learn remotely when we had to make this enormous shift when you look at New York City public schools, for instance, as just one of the many areas that need an overhaul, what do you see as some of the first things that need to be done. Because we know, and I know this from lobbying for New York City public schools at the federal level, is that where New York City as the rest of the

country follows. So what do you think need to happen after us seeing this pandemic, seeing the fault lines that

have been ignored for so long need to do. Yeah, you know, this is such a critical question as someone who not only went to an overcrowded, underfunded black elementary school when I was young and saw firsthand and felt firsthand what that felt like, how much it felt like we didn't matter and we weren't important, how our teachers struggled, And then being a public school parent myself with kids between the two of them, spent fifteen years in the

public school system, and I navigated everything from elementary school to middle school to high school in the public system. And it's of deep importance to me because it's fundamental to our democracy, frankly, and we have to understand our public education system as that and New York is it sees itself as exceptional, right, because we're a miraculous, wonderful place where the most diverse in the land, and the center of capital, the center of innovation, the center of

so many things. And we're also the center of segregation, where the center of far too few students getting the education they deserve, and the vast majority being students of color. And so one of the things I see is what happened during the pandemic was predictable, were predictable, and so that should be the thing that makes us most upset. Right. We knew before the pandemic that one point eight million New Yorkers either didn't have broadband access at home or

lacked a computer or a cell phone or both. Right, that is its own pandemic. And as someone as a racial justice advocate who worked on digital divide issues and then went into city Hall in twenty fourteen and with a mayor that said, it's universal broadband is on you.

You're the person who's worked on it before. We want communities of color to get what they deserve, and plotting out a plan including getting every single apartment in Queensbridge houses free broadband, finding the money, showing the city it had the resources and working collaboratively to make that impact was so important because what it said is we know there's a problem, but we're going to confront it now, and there ways for us to do it differently, be transformational.

I left in twenty sixteen and the rest of the plans for other public housing developments did not occur, and I just think about the lost opportunity there when we think about what happened when the pandemic struck. But what it also tells us is that we can. We can.

It just requires leadership that keeps the eyes on that prize and keeps government working in a way that is different from the way it usually works, so that our students who are in homeless shelters, A We're moving more people into permanent housing that's safe and affordable, but be that they have, even if they're in transitional housing or shelter, have what they need to learn. And that's something we can accomplish and that we will lay out a plan for.

But I say it because I've done it, and I just you know, getting this year back that our students have lost, recognizing that that spiritual exhaustion is now trauma is now trauma, and that that trauma requires trauma informed

care in our schools because that's about educational outcome. You know, if we're not treating the whole child and the whole family as a unit that has to be engaged in there in the child's education, and we're not seeing nutrition and we're not seeing mental health as key parts of that,

we're gonna miss the boat. And so I've also created a plan to put trauma inform care in schools and have social workers because we have to have students support teams that support our kids through all our kids, but particularly kids that are in communities that were deeply impacted. You know, when you talk about trauma care, I you know again, I go back to my days in the classroom,

and everything that you're saying is exactly right. Is that you know, we always want to focus on the ABC's, but we don't understand that in order to get there right, a child would have needed to have a good night's sleep, would have needed to have a hot meal, would have needed to have you know, the ability to move their bodies and get out their energy, and an absent all of that ABC's don't come right. Absent understanding what it is that parents need, our caregivers need in order to

be able to parent and care give. We don't do that. I see schools as community centers, right the center of community. And you know, but when I look at where the investment goes in our cities, where the money goes, there is a blatant disparity. And so how do you think about right sizing right? When we look at right sizing budgets, we see and you know, we'll talk in a minute about our policing in New York and the criminal justice

system in New York. But when we look at the budget of let's say the NYPD, which is in the billions of dollars, right, the six and seven billions of dollars, and we look at the largest school district in the country, if not in the world, and we don't see that. We don't see those bees following and following the dollars signs. How do you begin to right size something that seems like there's such an enormous gap for us to close.

That is a question I haven't answered to. And I do want to focus it on policing because I've already said and and this is as someone who has a godson, who I've been, who lives in public housing, who have has been you know, who's had experiences with police officers, who have cared, but has also been hit by police officers.

Is a child I have had to a young adult now, but I've had to accompany to court on things like skateboarding, on things like being in the park after dark, things that are not things that should result in me going to court with him with my law degree. So number one because as interrupted his educational experience that has traumatized him, and he will graduate from high school, but only with

a lot of support because of those experiences. So we want our kids to learn, particularly our black boys and girls, who far too often are criminalized in our system or treated as problems rather than being treated as people deserving of support for the problems they have, that we have to that we will not be successful, and we can't

afford to fail our children. So it starts with taking eighteen million dollars out of the police department budget and putting it in participatory justice funds for communities that have high rates of gun violence. Because when I had a friend who lost his nephew, his nephew was shot and killed at four thirty pm in bedsty just going to the neighborhood store. Now, what the family, in its trauma and pain called for was things like trauma informed care,

was more employment opportunities for young people. Was all the things that are about investing in communities and in our kids. So that Participatory Justice Fund is one where communities can say what helps it solve it's problem. So that could be after school programs, that could be additional trauma in foreign care in addition to what I'm going to make sure goes into those school tools. That could also be for more workforce development and other programs that communities want

in their school's mentorship. But the point is communities know what they need, and the reality is government can be a different partner by helping provide those resources that community can direct to problem solving. But the other thing I will say is we've already looking at it as a caring economy, right because our economy has been broken for

so many of our communities and people. And so we are also going to reduce the incoming class sizes, cadet class sizes, take advantage of the savings and corrections we're going to get by not prisoning people for poverty and closing rikers, as well as taking some other dollars that are still on the table and childcare black rents to create community drop off centers for childcare and elder care in communities. That also creates care jobs that will be

union jobs, there'll be good jobs. But we will also create a five thousand dollars a year grant program for the neediest families in order for them to care for their family members. And we're not good, by the way, you don't have to be a documented immigrant to benefit from that grant, because that's also important for our communities. People forget that black community has immigrants too, and that the immigranty of all races is also our community, our neighbors.

So we'll do that. But that's about investing in opportunity, investing in solutions, solving problems, and looking at our budget. And I will tell you that will also produce more public safety because so much of what we see in violence is trauma induced. Is induced because it's easier to get a gun than a job. We're going to flip that script and we're going to focus please on the job of policing, which is not mental health crisis calls. It is not running into school buildings. It is less

absolutely necessary, but certainly not for students support needs. And we're going to make sure that we have counselors instead of cops in our schools and that our kids can get jobs critically important if we're really looking at what investment in our communities mean, and then the police can focus on things like keeping illegal guns out of our city and out of our communities, which is something that is absolutely important and that we want police officers to

be able to focus on. You know, I think that we have, over the course of decades conflated what it is that we believe that policing was supposed to be right. And we know the historic the historical understanding and birth of policing in this country. But what we have seen is that much in the same way that I'm talking about lopsided budgets, you're talking about lopsided justice. Right where you know your few or godson can be skateboarding in a park and then end up in a court of

law and thankfully he had you. But if he hadn't right, where would he have been? Would he been like Calif Broader, who would have ended up in Rikers, and you know, and the key would have been thrown away, never to be heard from again. When we talk about this term of defund the police right and and and of creating community, creating investment in community, we see that there is incredible pushback from the police. We see incredible pushback from police unions.

And I want to know, how do you both create a city that is that is equitable in terms of the fact that my tax dollars go to funding them police, just like my white neighbors tax dollars go to funding the police. Except I would be fearful to call the police if I needed them because I don't want to

end up as a hashtag. And so how do we look at this the readjustment in terms of the relationship that police have with the communities that they are policing, the excess violence that we have seen over the course of decades with too many black lives lost, and then also recognizing that we are not putting money in the right place. But when we talk about defund that spins off into something else. So how does your campaign, how would your administration deal with this balancing act that has

been that we've seen play out across the country. Yeah. Look, I start with it from the perspective of a moral budget. A moral budget and a moral budget requires us one to look at how we build revenue effectively, but in ways that solve problems, not create them. Right, So revenue generation means thinking about as I said, you know, we're going to take ten billion dollars, actually didn't say this part the caring economy is one piece of that. Right,

We're actually putting money back in people's pockets. They can care for themselves, they can care for their communities. They can put money back into the economy when we help them get those jobs, when we help them work because or deal with emergencies, because they have a safe place to leave family members. We also, by giving them those grants, are ensuring that they can put money back into the economy. That's good for everyone, and that actually brings revenue back

into the city. Coffers, it's also looking at it from what our resources are that we control. That creates more of those opportunities. So I'm going to spend ten billion dollars capital construction budget that is separate from the expense budget. We're often talking about budgeting, is if we don't have two different budgets, but we do the capital budget. That just means money we borrow to build things we need built and fix things we need fixed. And what do

we need. We need affordable housing that's deeply affordable for so many of our workers who work hard but can't afford the rent. We need, you know, to make sure that they're creating. We're solving the problem with nitscha. So we'll put two billion dollars into renovation and rehabilitation. As I said, my god son lives in public housing. This ain't be a radical for me. People are unsafe and unsanitary conditions and they deserve better h green economy, green jobs.

You know how we're thinking about building resiliency when you know two thirds of our people who are in flood zones or low income people of color. So these are all ways where we're fixing problems we have as a city. But we're doing it by creating a hundred thousand jobs. We're going to do local targeted hiring. We're going to think about local procurement buying the things we need for

those projects. We're going to be thinking about how that creates jobs for artists and creatives as well, so that while we're while we're spending and borrowing, to spend in a way that is stimulative that we know from the Great Recession to the Great Depression has helped us come back in the past. We're also going to focus it on art what I call communities of concern, which were the communities that were worse off before COVID, and we're worse off during COVID, and we'll have a long trajectory

to recovery and deserve investments post COVID. And so that's really looking at our budget differently, and we've already talked about it on the police side. It means that when we make cuts, and we will, that we're making choices that are about investing in our future, because that's what a moral budget is. It is investment in the kind of city I think we all want to live in.

When I talk about it in that way, when I talk about what is just good common sense, like nobody thinks that police officer's job is responding to a mental health crisis. Everyone agrees that it's a mental health professional that should be responding to a mental health crisis with the ability to ask for police backup if the expert thinks he or she needs it. But that should be a call by a mental health expert, not by the police who don't sign up for the force to become

mental health experts. That's not why they're signing up for the job. And there's so much that we can focus policing on that's appropriate and that we know our communities want police focused on. I use the legal guns because that's such an obvious example, and it's such an example that police officers also want to work on. But putting more police officers on a street corner doesn't stop the shooting it. Oh, it just moves it over a block. Why would we keep doing it that way? Yeah? You know.

One of my last questions for you, Maya's with regard to housing in New York City, which is probably on top of policing, is probably one of the toughest issues. We have some of the highest rents of anywhere I probably outside of San Francisco, that I have ever seen. But during this pandemic, we also saw a massive fleeing out of very wealthy white areas of New York City where people can leave and go to their second and

third homes. And so we've seen in some places prices, rents drop, while in others they stay steady or they're continuing to rise, which is a product then of gentrification. We see who gets to stay and who gets pushed out. How do we battle against this because we know that, you know, look, I don't want anyone's life expectancy to be based on their zip code. I don't want any child's future to be based on where they are stationed, based on the tax dollars, the income tax that is

coming in. But we know that that is the reality of the situation. But there are young, brilliant black and brown people that are being pushed out that New York City actually needs. And so how how do you plan to come back? This this is and this is this is a decades, decades a long problem that hasn't been dealt with. How does your administration plan to deal with that?

This is such a such a critical crisis, and it was a critical crisis before COVID to your point, Danielle, and I think that's important for us to recognize and a big part of what was calling me in. You know, I was in Staten Island yesterday and talking to a young man turned out from East Harlem who was commuting two hours each way to a service job, a minimum wage job in Staten Island because there were no jobs

in his community or closer to his community. And so if you think about that, I mean that's and he lived in public he lives in public housing, and he's lucky to live in public housing because that's permanently affordable.

The problem is it's crumbling around him, right. So one is we have to recognize public housing is one of our greatest assets in terms of permanently affordable housing, and we have to keep it public to ensure that the people who have helped build this city, empower the city, and who have been essential to this city can stay in this city and live in the city with dignity. The other thing we have to recognize is that we have a thousand acres roughly a vacant land that the

city owns. That's our opportunity rather than selling it off, to make sure we're utilizing it for one hundred percent permanently affordable housing to meet the needs that our folks have. It also means looking at the opportunity that is unfortunately created by shuttered hotels or about two hundred shuttered hotels in the city. But we deferately have to recognize that homelessness is an eviction crisis. Homelessness is an affordability crisis,

which is why it's an effiction crisis. And so by creating more deeply affordable housing, thinking about and supportive housing for those who are mentally ill or have substance addiction issues, that that's also something that creates more public safety for folks who've been afraid of the mental illness that we have seen on our streets. And many people are legitimately afraid that, but that's also a humanitarian problem we can solve with a humanitarian solution that puts people in housing

with support services. Those hotels represent an opportunity there, as does other vacancy. And asking for more from our private developers rather than being counting the number of affordable units we're creating, creating and asking for more deeply affordable units from the private sectors something the city can do. And I want to say one other thing about this. We know that we are a city with everyone right eight hundred different languages. We speak about almost forty percent of

our residents born somewhere else in another country. Our diversity is a deep part of what makes us an exciting city. And I haven't talked to anyone wealthy who does not value or agree with that, which also gives us the opportunity. And I've had this conversation with many folks who were able to shelter somewhere else other than New York City, and they recognize the privilege of that, particularly as they

were watching the news and seeing the images. This is an opportunity for us to pull together and to say to folks with resources, we all love the city, and we all have something to bring to the table. And some folks have no how and elbow grease and just kind of a commitment that's just raw and can innovate and get things done in community. Some of us have resources,

some of us have money. And what I've been asking folks everywhere I talk is like, we've all got to put on the table what we have to give, and for those with resources, we're going to ask that you give to help us recover the city in a way that holds on to exactly that, because it's what's dear to all of us and what makes us New York City,

and that we can't lose. Maya. The last question I have for you is you know, folks have been so they've been paying attention to literally what's in front of them right over this past year, and maybe now they are starting to get engaged with this race. What sets you apart from the rest of the field, and what do you want people to know about you? I've had the distinct honor and pleasure to get to know you throughout the years of being on TV with you and

understanding your strategic and brilliant mind and analysis. But what do you want others that are just maybe just tuning in to know that separates you from everyone else? Well, thank you for those kind words, Danielle, and right back at you. You forgot to mention the green room conversations, which yeah, we often that MSNBC should just put a camera in the green room. They should have done that.

They should have done that. But look, I am really honored to be a top tier candidate in this race, which is no small thing because we've never elected a woman, let alone a black woman to be mayor of New York City. And what sets me apart isn't just that. Part of it is having been the child of activists, you know, and spending a career working on exactly how we transform our city and our community so that they work for all of us and we remain a city that is on a shining hill of opportunity in a

pluralistic democracy, meaning one that looks like the globe. Is what I have done with my whole career as a change maker twenty five years before I ever went into

city government. But I'm the only candidate that has both the experience of going to a segregated public school, of watching a neighborhood be displaced from gentrification when I was a kid, to doing it as a civil rights lawyer, as a racial justice advocate, and then going into city hall as the first black woman counseled to a New York City mayor to show city government exactly how to be transformational for our communities, like getting broadband into public housing,

like getting the first sanctuary cities legislation passed when it was logjammed, Like creating a table where we had advocates talking about how we reduce the school to prison pipeline because government wasn't sufficiently listening as it was thinking about its memorandum of understanding with the police department, so that we were starting to get those numbers down and stop

seeing our kids as problems. But it's that kind of approach that's also about listening and learning, because I am a candidate in this race that says very explicitly, I don't have all the answers, and that's not the point anyone in a historic crisis, and our crisis has been it's historic for generations, but particularly at a time like COVID that says they have all the answers is not telling the truth. And I will never lie to the people of the City of New York, nor to anyone.

And I will always be Maya Wiley, and that's the person who's been a change maker outside of government and in but in partnership with communities, and that's what sets me apart. Well, I am so excited about your candidacy. I think that the city is ready for a revolutionary such as yourself, and I'm just so grateful and appreciative for you taking the time to join us on wike

A f today. Well, and Danielle, I'm so appreciated for your voice, You're intellect the way you cut through things because as you know, we only get through this because we do it from many different perches. And you have had a powerful one in them. I'm proud to be able to call you my friend. Thank you as always, dear friends. Power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck. See after Labor Day.