Good morning to readers old and new, and welcome to this September 10, 2019 edition of East & Creek. The weather this morning is spooky, the sun has less and less to say every day, and 41 of the city’s elected positions will be vacant in 2021. That’s right — it’s primary season.
Victoria Cambranes launches 2021 bid for city council
Victoria Cambranes, a Greenpoint native running for city council, offers cookies to a group of protesters at her campaign launch on Sunday. [photo provided to e&c by Victoria Cambranes]
Victoria Cambranes, a Greenpoint native, DSA member, and local activist, will make her second run for the New York City Council in Brooklyn’s 33rd district in 2021, she announced on Sunday.
She will run to replace Stephen Levin, who was first elected to the council in 2009 and is term-limited in 2021. The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that hundreds of New Yorkers are expected to run for municipal office in the coming years, enabled by term limits and emboldened by new, generous public financing for political candidates. Cambranes expects to face several challengers in 2021. Ben Solotaire, a community organizer in Levin’s office, has filed paper work with the Board of Elections for a potential run for his boss’s seat; he declined to comment to e&c.
In an interview with e&c on Wednesday, Cambranes said that she hopes to run as a member of an informal slate of progressive candidates, particularly those running to represent parts of Brooklyn that have seen recent real estate development. As Cambranes explained to e&c — and later elaborated in a speech on Sunday — she is running to encourage what she calls “considerate development” in the city. Skeptical of real estate and concerned about recent rezonings, including in North Brooklyn in 2006, Cambranes said she would roll back subsidies for private development and offer “zero votes” in support of “luxury towers” along Brooklyn’s waterfront. “There’s literally no space for any more of that,” she told e&c.
Instead, Cambranes hopes to preserve Industrial Business Zones (IBZs) within her district, as well as mom-n-pop commercial entities and small homeowners. And as for preserving and expanding New York City’s stock of affordable housing, Cambranes intends to ensure that NYCHA stays in public hands and encourage cooperative housing, community land trusts, share-to-buy public housing and other similar programs.
As it was during her first run for council in 2017, public safety — and, particularly, street safety — is a priority for Cambranes. Community policing and sensitivity training are key, Cambranes told e&c, to ensuring that the NYPD polices “human crime” (e.g. sexual assault) just as it does property crime.
Cambranes is keenly aware that the district she hopes to represent stretches from Newtown Creek to the northern tip of the Gowanus Canal — that is, from one federal superfund site to another. In outlining a vision for a sustainable New York, she again emphasizes the need for “considerate development,” offering as an example the danger of overwhelmed sewers possible following a rezoning and redevelopment of Gowanus. On Sunday, she told likely supporters that she would support New York’s environment through a councilmember’s power over land-use decisions, budgeting and oversight over city departments like Sanitation and Transportation.
On Sunday, while explaining the public safety plank of her platform, Cambranes said, “We, as New Yorkers, need to show that we do not stand for hate; we do not stand for anti-semitism and bigotry; and we will stand up for it and put our bodies on the line. That is what it takes in today’s politics, in today’s America.” It was a direct reference to the small group gathered outside the venue, bearing signs and Polish flags, and chanting, “Say no to Victoria Cambranes.”
Cambranes, who is the daughter of a Polish immigrant, is reviled by members of the Polish diaspora living in and around New York City for her involvement in efforts to deplatform Holocaust revisionists and one far-right politician scheduled to speak in Greenpoint. “Victoria stop lying about Polish people,” one of their signs read. Some signs, reviewed in images sent to e&c by two people who attended the event, included anti-Semitic revisions of Polish history. Earlier on Sunday, some members of the group of protesters had demonstrated against “anti-Polish” policies at the Israeli consulate in Manhattan.
Cambranes interacted with the protesters briefly, offering them cookies and water. Later, she told e&c, she invited them in Polish to her next fundraiser, at which point they packed up and left.
What else is up in Greenpoint?
“Additional L train closures will affect Brooklyn commuters this coming weekend, the MTA announced on Wednesday. The L train will not run between 8th Avenue in Manhattan and Broadway Junction in Brooklyn from around 10:45 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 13 through the weekend. The L train will resume service at 5 a.m. on Monday, Sept. 16.” (Greenpoint Post’s Ryanne Salzano)
Queer Eye in Northside: “‘Wait. Oh, my God. Okay. Wait. This is it. This is IT.’ Antoni Porowski crouches on the dusty floor of Krajan Polish Deli, in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint neighborhood, before a yard-long shelf display of mayonnaise.” (Taste’s Anna Hazel)
Ya got something to say? Say it. Brooklyn’s Community Board 1 meets tonight at 6 p.m. at the Swinging Sixties Senior Center.
Thus concludes this September 10, 2019 edition of East & Creek, the twice-weekly newsletter about Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Read the full archives here.
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See ya around the neighb,
Jon Hanrahan
Author, e&c