Dianne Morales’s N.Y.C. Mayor Endorsement Interview

Dianne Morales is a former nonprofit executive who led Phipps Neighborhoods, the social services arm of the affordable housing developer Phipps Houses.

This interview with Ms. Morales was conducted by the editorial board of The New York Times on April 26.

Read the board’s endorsement for the Democratic mayoral primary here.

Kathleen Kingsbury: Thank you so much for joining us. We wanted to start out by asking you if you could spend one or two minutes talking about why you want this job and why you’re the best candidate in the field. Brevity will be appreciated on all these answers, only because we just don’t have enough time with you. But I will let you start from there. I am sure several of my colleagues will have lots of questions for you.

Great. So sure. Thank you all for having me. Apologies for the technological difficulties early on. So, I’m running for mayor. Right now, 700,000 of the 1.1 million students who attend our public schools — the families, the majority Black and brown families — do not trust their kids to go back to our public schools. We know also that during the pandemic, some New Yorkers were treated graciously by friendly officers who handed out P.P.E. to them, while at the same time other Black and brown New Yorkers were met with more of the same brutality and unnecessary police force, physical force, that I have been speaking out about. The city boasted of its broadband efforts under the de Blasio administration. And yet, during this pandemic we’ve seen too many young people who actually felt the impact of the design of poverty on our city.

[The Times editorial board has written on the need to expand access to broadband, particularly in the context of the pandemic.]

And at the same time, food and housing insecurity has existed in the city while Wall Street has flourished over the course of the last 15 months in particular. And 20 percent of our household earners control over 54 percent of the city’s wealth. I am in this race because I think it is time for our city to live up to the rhetoric and the potential of actually being the greatest city in the world. And that means being willing to confront and reconcile and address the deep inequities and injustices that have been perpetuated in the city for far too long.

We don’t need reform. We don’t need renewal. What we need is to actually transform our city and finally create a city and build a city together that works for all of us. We know that politics as usual has never worked. And the idea of continuing to do the same thing and expecting a different outcome is in fact the definition of insanity.

So what I am proposing is a radically transformative new New York City that I am proposing to rebuild, to build in partnership with the communities that have been left behind for so long, that means women of color, it means the disabled, it means our essential workers, our undocumented workers. We need to build a city that works for them, because we know that throughout this pandemic they have worked for us. So that is why I want this job. I also believe that I have the skills and experience that make me uniquely qualified to do it successfully. So thank you for having me here today. I’m excited to be here for this conversation.

Mara Gay: Thank you. It’s a great segue into the next question for you. As mayor, you would be running a city with more than 300,000 employees and a budget larger than that of many small nations. How does running a nonprofit prepare you for this role?

Great question. Running a nonprofit prepares me for this role in a lot of different ways. One is, the nonprofit sector is probably the only sector where you know that you are going to be reimbursed from the beginning, that you’re going to be reimbursed at 80 cents on the dollar to the actual costs that it takes to operate and to provide services. I have done that not only successfully, I have closed those budgets.

I have grown the program budgets in the organizations that I run. And I have done it without compromising the quality of the services that I’ve provided to the most vulnerable New Yorkers. In that capacity, I have served as an executive of large organizations whose job and mission is to actually serve communities and people directly, to have a direct impact on improving the quality of those people’s lives on a day-to-day basis, not writing policy papers that sit on the shelf, not opining about the impact of one policy or another, actually doing the work, being confronted on a daily basis with the challenges that people are facing and actually having to come up with the solutions and the strategies to help people overcome that. And I have done that successfully.

The last thing I’ll say on this is that I also have lived experience that makes it such that I have direct understanding of the frustrations and the challenges that people have to overcome and navigate on a daily basis in order to try to live in dignity and provide for their families. So I think that all of those things in combination, actually, not only as a nonprofit executive, prepare me for this role, but actually uniquely prepare me for this role as opposed to some of my peers in this race.

Mara Gay: Thanks. And just very briefly, about how many people have you managed, give or take? And what’s your management style?

Sure. So the largest team I’ve managed was probably about 500. My management style is that I’m really good at surrounding myself with people who I think are smarter than me, people who I know sort of offset the different things that I may or may not bring to the table. Very collaborative in terms of trying to solicit people’s ideas and thoughts and also being able to co-create those solutions and strategies.

But I think the other thing is the ability to sort of make tough decisions when need be and do it in such a way that even those who are in opposition somewhat begrudgingly come along, because they understand the rationale and the sort of reasoning behind the decision and feel invested in the long-term outcome. I think it’s really important that no matter how big the organization or the city, that every person that is connected and that is doing a job or work related to the city understands the role that they specifically play and the value that they bring. Because I think ultimately everybody just wants to feel valued and wants to feel like they’re doing a good job. No one gets up every day and says: “I don’t care. I don’t really want to do a good job at this.” So making sure that people feel valued and respected and a part of the solution is a critical part of being successful as an executive.

Mara Gay: Thanks. Alex?

Alex Kingsbury: I’m wondering if you can talk about what you think explains the rise in violent crime and what you would do about it if elected mayor.

Sure. So I think we can’t really separate or tease out the rise in crime, the so-called rise in crime from all of the other insecurities that people have experienced over the course of the last 15 months.

[With 447 homicides, 2020 was New York’s deadliest year in nearly a decade.]

You know, we’re talking about people who have been increasingly housing insecure, people who have been increasingly food insecure, people who have not had access to health care or mental health care. There’s a level of sort of desperation that people are feeling and experiencing that is pushing people over the edge. And I think that there are definitely people that were experiencing, suffering from mental health challenges before the pandemic that have just gotten exacerbated as a result of it.

So I think that one of the critical things that needs to be done in order for us to begin to address the increased violence that our communities are experiencing is to actually address our basic human needs, to make sure that everyone has a stable roof over their heads, that everyone has access to and knows where their next meal is coming from. And everybody has access to the basic sort of economic stability that they need.

We can’t underestimate the levels of stress that have been imposed on some of our most vulnerable, marginalized communities as a result of the last 15 months and how that has resulted in an increasing desperation and frustration and anxiety that results in people acting and behaving irrationally. We need to take care of people in terms of their basic needs before we can actually begin to talk about what is, in fact, causing the violence. And I think that if we actually addressed those needs first, we would find that there was a corresponding decrease in the levels of violence that people have been experiencing

Alex Kingsbury: Are you saying — what did you mean so-called rise in crime? Do you dispute that violent crime is on the rise?

I think that there are some things that are happening now that are specifically and directly connected to those two conditions.

So I think that’s what I mean about it. It’s hard to extrapolate one thing from the other. Yes, there are definitely documented cases, at least more documented cases of violence, particularly ethnic violence. But I think that those things are inextricably linked. I’m not sure that we can separate that.

[For years, New York has enjoyed a reputation for being the safest big city in the nation. But in 2020, homicides increased 41 percent and shootings increased more than 97 percent from 2019. Other cities around the country saw increases in gun violence, too, a trend most experts attribute to the trauma and upheaval caused by the pandemic.]

Brent Staples: I understand that, the social work aspect of what you’re talking about. I mean that sincerely. But don’t you believe that there is such a thing as criminal behavior? I mean, there are criminals on the streets with guns and they’re killing people. And basically what you have to do as a mayor — you are also a police person, you know. In a way that’s not abusive, but your job is to save people’s lives and police the city.

I think I respectfully disagree. I mean, I think that yes, to the first part of that, I think the mayor’s job is to save people’s lives. But I think that we can do that — We don’t have to do that through policing. I think that there is a way to save people’s lives by providing for them to actually live in such a way that they’re not at the point where they need to cause harm to others. I think there’s a lot of different interventions that we could be deploying in order to keep people safe and an exhaustive list of alternatives before we actually resort to policing.

And so, you know, I think that I don’t have a poker face. So the expression you saw on my face when you talked about the social work interventions, some of them may be social work interventions. But really what we’re talking about is human interventions. There has been a consistent and steady dehumanization of a significant percentage of New Yorkers, Black and brown communities, by the divesting that we’ve done in terms of the critical services that those people in those communities need to live a decent and dignified life. And to me, there’s a corresponding dehumanization that goes with that. And we need to start treating people like human beings if we want them to really act like human beings. And that means providing for them to be able to live in dignity. And I don’t think anybody’s asking — we’re not talking about handouts here. We’re just talking about really the equity and justice that we need in order for people to get a level playing field so that they can provide for themselves and their families.

Brent Staples: I’ll back off this, because we only have a short time. But one thing, as a longtime reporter and as a person of color living in America, I’ve lived in some pretty poor communities. Most people in every community are law-abiding people just trying to live. And doing that, despite poverty, despite not having services. But there are people in those communities that need to be taken off the street because they’re doing some really bad, evil things. And I don’t know how far you are going to get in this campaign if people ask you about crime, and you start talking about other things that, — you know, you might get to that eventually. But that’s just me.

I’ll respond to that if I may. I mean, I’d say I’ve gotten pretty far on this campaign talking about it this way. I don’t think anybody really expected us to get this far. And here we are. You know, that’s not to say that if someone murders someone else there shouldn’t be consequences. What I am suggesting is that we cannot speak to those things that happen in the moment without actually addressing and speaking to and recognizing and acknowledging the deeply rooted systemic and structural racism that exists in this country that has resulted in these deep disparities and inequities and the trauma in our communities, and the generations and generations of trauma.

We can’t just — I guess my position, perhaps different from yours, is that that needs to be acknowledged in the process. I’m not suggesting that the person who commits a murder gets to run around on the streets. But I’m suggesting that there is something deeper that needs to be done in order to break that cycle. And the solution to that is not incarceration and policing. A long-term solution in order to address those issues and get to the root cause is not to be found in policing and incarceration.

Mara Gay: Let’s move on to housing if we can. I’d love to talk more about this, but we’re crunched for time. You’ve been pretty critical of the city’s approach to affordable housing — or housing, I should say — over the past decade. How would you leverage the mayoralty to build low- and middle-income housing at a large scale, given that city subsidies are not an unlimited resource?

So a couple of different things, I think one is that the current — the other thing I’ve criticized is the current land use process. I think it’s broken. I think the city’s prioritized rezonings that have in fact, encouraged and accelerated gentrification and benefited the developers and private landlords instead of folks in our communities.

I am a believer in housing as a human right and housing first.

[Nearly one in every 106 New Yorkers is homeless. Every night nearly 4,000 individuals sleep in public spaces and on the streets. “Housing First” is a policy approach that prioritizes placing homeless individuals in permanent housing rather than temporary shelter. New York City announced a plan in 2015 to build 15,000 units of supportive housing by 2030, which would increase the total supply by roughly 50 percent. As homelessness continues to increase, the Coalition for the Homeless has urged the city to accelerate and hit that target by 2025.]

I don’t think that the communities that have been so harmed by racism, redlining, capitalism — I just don’t think they’ve had a fair shot. So I think it’s really important for us to transform how we do housing. I think it’s important for us to center and prioritize communities first. I think there are, as a result of the pandemic and even before the pandemic, there are definitely different things that we can do with the existing spaces that we have, whether we’re talking about the vacated hotel rooms or whether we’re talking about vacant land.

I am a proponent of expanding community land trusts. I think New York City could and should be a model for social housing. I think we could start with NYCHA, which is a model for social housing. And I also think that we could significantly expand co-operative housing around the city as well. All of the moneys that we are currently providing to developers in the form of tax incentives and tax subsidies and 421a, although I know that that’s at the state level, if we directed those dollars in ways that prioritize the community first and deprioritize the profit of developers, I think we would make significant headway in terms of moving toward being able to provide and guarantee housing for all.

Mara Gay: How many units do you think you could get out of that approach, ballpark?

I mean, I think the goal for my administration would be to actually provide housing for everybody. We’re working on the calculations as to how many units we could do over the course of the four years. But the purpose is also — the idea is also that we would repurpose the E.D.C. into what we’re calling the Corporation for the Public Good to serve as sort of an alternative way of partnering with the community on these measurable outcomes over the course of my administration.

[Between 2010 and 2019, New York City added 197,558 housing units. Over the same decade, the city added more than 900,000 jobs. The gap between job growth and housing growth is a key reason housing prices were on the rise before the pandemic — and are likely to climb as the city recovers.]

Mara Gay: What would you do if a community or a City Council member decided that he or she didn’t want community housing in her or his district?

One of the things I’ve talked about is the need for us to really kind of prioritize local community needs and voice. There has to be a balance in doing that with the sort of scope of the city, right? We have to be able to provide, to do things in the context of what is happening around the city at large so that no one community gets either overly burdened or overly resourced one way or the other. There has to be that kind of balance. So it has to be done within the context of the distribution and the allocation of resources, of developments, of other kinds of things citywide, so that we’re working on both prioritizing city voice at the same time that we’re working on sort of leveling things across the city.

Eleanor Randolph: So just to add to the question about housing and management: You worked for Phipps Neighborhoods. Can you talk to us a little bit about the boss of that operation, who was listed very often as one of the worst landlords in the city?

[Phipps Neighborhoods is the social services arm of Phipps Houses, an affordable housing developer. The developer is often cited by tenants as one of the city’s “worst evictors.”]

Yeah, so I was the boss of Phipps Neighborhoods. Adam Weinstein was the boss of Phipps Houses. And so I was a tenant in many of his, in several of their developments. I — people have issues with the way Phipps Houses operated, and I think that the issues are legitimate. And I think that that is — it’s fair game. My stance on housing and the housing guarantee for all is informed largely by the 25-plus years that I have spent engaging with and working with the community. And I know that there’s a sort of either a confluence or a lack of understanding of the difference between Phipps Houses and Phipps Neighborhoods.

But the reality of it is that I didn’t really have any say over what happened with Phipps Houses and that may be a thoroughly dissatisfying answer for some people. But it is the reality. And as I’ve done from Day 1, I’m not avoiding that conversation. I’m giving it to you straight, but what I was directly responsible for was the human services component and we served over 10,000 South Bronx residents in education and career programming primarily.

Nick Fox: Maybe I’m misunderstanding you, but it doesn’t sound like you’ve got an opinion of how Phipps Houses operated. Because it seems like fairly widespread criticism, both in how it treated tenants and workers. And I’m assuming that your social service organization dealt with the residents of those houses.

We did some. Less than 5 percent of the residents in those houses were service recipients from Phipps Neighborhoods. And as I said, I think the concerns about Phipps Houses are valid and justified. I’m not saying that I didn’t have an issue with it. I’m validating those. I’m just distinguishing between what Phipps Houses did and who they are, and what I did and the organization that I ran.

Mara Gay: What is your plan to grow the city’s economy and how will you create good paying jobs?

[New York City lost more than half a million jobs during 2020, losses that were concentrated among New Yorkers of color.]

Sure. My plan for growing the economy is actually prioritizing focus on our small and midsize businesses first. We know that small and midsize businesses actually employ 50 percent of New Yorkers, and the historic way of managing the economy in New York City, and the over-prioritization on large corporations and big box companies over our local small businesses, is something that I think has contributed to the exploitation of our labor and the exporting of our wealth.

So I would use all of the dollars that we historically have focused on providing tax subsidies and tax incentives to large corporations — I would redirect those to our small and mid-sized businesses first to make sure that we are growing our economy from the ground up and sort of from the center out.

One of the things we know about small and mid-sized businesses is that the owners of those businesses tend to live locally. They tend to invest locally. And that’s a way for us to grow our own sort of local economy. I also think that we should work to expand worker-owned cooperatives in that way. And I have also made a commitment to expanding the care economy.

One of the things I think we’ve seen over the course of the last year is that many of those people who care for us — child care, early childhood, disability or home care — are the folks who made it possible for things to keep operating in the course of the pandemic. And yet they’re the ones that are the most vulnerable. So I think we need to grow and expand the care economy.

And then the last thing I’ll say is that I am committed to a green infrastructure for New York City that would involve the creation of a public works corps, if you will, and invest in the establishment of these jobs in partnership with CUNY that would provide the training and the preparation for community members to be able to move into these roles that will also, at the same time, help prepare New York City for the future from a sort of environmental resiliency and sustainability perspective.

Mara Gay: Thanks. Brent, you have an education question for us?

Brent Staples: How would you — first of all, there is — you opened up talking about parents not being able to have their kids back at school. But we just had a story that said that as many as 30 percent of the teachers may not return to school in September, and they might want to teach on Zoom, and so forth and so on. I wonder what you think about that. And what do you think about the teachers’ union role in this whole pandemic scenario? And also, what is your — What is your plan to deal with the segregation problem and the open access to higher quality schools to poor people?

[Across the country, teachers’ unions have played a role in delaying in-person school reopenings. Critics say Mayor Bill de Blasio frequently cowed to the demands of the city’s teachers’ union.]

I’ll start with the teachers piece. As a former educator, I think that the teachers are expressing really loud and clear that they don’t feel safe. We know that our buildings are old. The infrastructure is lacking. We know that teachers had to have their windows open. There’s a whole host of issues with our physical sort of buildings.

One of the things I had called for this time last year, actually, was — We had this wealth of resources in the city. And by that I mean, as someone who was a former operator of an organization that partnered with schools, I know that there’s a whole infrastructure in community-based organizations, in arts and cultural institutions that we could have tapped into and we could still tap into in terms of providing additional space, just for example. In terms of expanding the square footage that is accessible to our children and teachers to maintain safe social distancing. In terms of buildings that have better ventilation and filtration, in terms of buildings that have access to technology and infrastructure. We could and should essentially deputize those entities to serve as school spaces.

We could also tap into many of their staff who often serve — you know, most of these places have some sort of education curriculum, and have staff that have interacted with or have, you know, done things in schools. Those staff could either supplement on the academic front or they could supplement on the socio-emotional front. Those are the things that we could have done to help provide a sense of safety to our teachers, to provide additional resources to our teachers and to provide resources to our children, as well, while engaging the community-based organizations and arts and cultural institutions rather than having them shut down throughout the course of this pandemic.

Brent Staples: Don’t you think —

That’s — yeah, sorry.

Brent Staples: If teachers are, if all teachers are fully vaccinated, why shouldn’t they be back at school teaching? I don’t get it. What’s the —

Are all teachers fully vaccinated?

Brent Staples: Just say that hypothetically they are. There’s only 70,000 of them. I mean, that’s not a heavy lift.

I mean, so are you suggesting that we mandate vaccination?

Brent Staples: Yeah, I am.

Yeah.

Alex Kingsbury: We mandate it for children, right?

Brent Staples: Yeah. And all the colleges are already doing that. They’re mandating — universities, you’re going to have to have vaccinations to come back. So basically — so you think that teachers should have the option of not being vaccinated?

[The number of colleges and universities mandating the coronavirus vaccine for their students is rising quickly. Most already require proof of vaccines for diseases that spread easily in close quarters, like bacterial meningitis.]

I mean. No, no. What I was suggesting was in the current situation, understanding that teachers are feeling fearful about going to school. I don’t think — so here’s the thing. Just to be clear, I don’t think teachers are saying, “I don’t want to go back to school” just because they’re lazy and don’t want to work. I think, you know, there has to be some sort of understanding about something else going on here.

And I think what they are letting us know is that they don’t trust the system, that they don’t trust the city, that they don’t trust our leadership and our government, that they don’t trust their union, actually. And so I think that there needs to be something that’s done in order to regain that trust.

And I don’t — I’m not sure that just saying, you know, “You’ve gotta do it” is the thing to do. Because we’re putting our children’s lives in their hands on a day-to-day basis, and our children’s education in their hands, on a day-to-day basis. So I think that teachers need to feel trusted and respected in a different kind of way than we have managed to do throughout the course of this pandemic.

So whether that’s making sure that they have priority in access to the vaccine and are feeling comfortable and that they know that everybody in their classroom is vaccinated, as well. Those are steps that we can take in order to help make it easier and more comfortable for them to feel like they’re returning to school safely.

What I was talking about was, sort of, in a scenario where that’s not the case, how do we — how do we expand access to resources so that we help to make them feel safer rather than what we did, which was to force them to go back to the school buildings that they would that they knew didn’t have the ventilation and weren’t safe.

Mara Gay: I’m sorry — we’ve got to keep — I’m sorry, guys, could you just briefly answer Brent’s question on what you would do to help integrate the schools? I know you’ve got a plan, but if you could just keep it brief, it would be great. Thank you.

Right. Sure. So I’ve called for getting rid of all the screens and the barriers to access. I think that all of the filters that we provide that limit people’s access and increase and contribute to the segregation of our schools is problematic. I think we need to look at district lines and really sort of move towards a really, really open system across the city.

And I would you know, I’ve talked about in my first 100 days issuing an education equity order, executive order to begin that process of desegregating our schools.

[Among the Democratic mayoral candidates, Ms. Morales has one of the strongest pro-integration plans for city schools, according to The Times.]

I also think we need to make sure that we are implementing a culturally competent curriculum and transformative justice curriculum and really doing things in our schools so that our children specifically feel valued, respected and loved. Because I know that if we’re not doing that, our children can’t learn.

Mara Gay: Thanks. Eleanor — streetscape?

Eleanor Randolph: So this is in some ways a management question, and, you know, there are 50 different departments in the city and every one of them sort of deals with one part of city life. And we’ve plucked out the city streets and we want to talk about — There are 8,000 miles of city streets. And there is a contest going on between people who walk, and trucks and cars, and restaurants that want extra space, and cars that want to park. How would you deal with some of these issues? Yeah.

[After an especially deadly few years for the city’s cyclists, many have called for more protected bike lanes and for a broader effort to make the city’s streets safer for cyclists. The Times columnist Farhad Manjoo recently envisioned what a carless New York might look like.]

So, you know, I really think that the open streets that we’ve experienced over the course of the last year gave us a glimpse into something that’s possible. I think that what we know from an environmental perspective clearly signals that we need to take some drastic measures to reduce emissions in the city. And I — to me I think that that goes for, you know, cars on the road as well.

So I really think that we need a sort of comprehensive plan that allows for expanding open space, expanding bike paths, expanding public transit and reducing cars on the road. That is — I’ve kind of put a stake in the ground on that. I think that’s an important thing for us to to move towards. And I understand that there are, you know, car owners and drivers that feel very, very protective of that. But I do think that we need to — this is one of those situations where we need to look at the bigger picture, longer term, and make the hard choices now that ultimately benefit our city in the long run, both from an individual and from an environmental perspective.

Mara Gay: Thank you. So more than 32,000 New Yorkers have died of Covid-19. Thousands more have become gravely ill or lost a loved one. How do you think the city should honor these victims and survivors? A memorial? An event? Something else?

[Some of the 32,000 New Yorkers who died of Covid-19 were memorialized in images projected on the Brooklyn Bridge in March.]

Um, well, nobody’s ever really asked that question. You know, I don’t know how we honor the people that we lost. I think that we can honor them through how it is that we take care of the ones they’ve left behind. And that includes, you know, making it possible for folks to live in dignity. You know, I just went to an exhibit yesterday on Broadway that was in honor of the essential workers. So many folks who were undocumented and otherwise just sort of ignored. It was heart-wrenching. And I think the best way for us to honor them is actually to to take care of the people that they’ve left behind and make sure that those folks are not continuing to struggle.

Mara Gay: Thank you. Greg? Do you want to have your infrastructure question?

Greg Bensinger: Oh, yeah, sure, I’m happy to ask that. What do you view as the most critical infrastructure project for the city in the coming 10, 15 years?

You know, I think about — One of the things I mentioned was my sort of green new deal, green deal for New York City. I would really like for us to begin moving towards modernizing and updating and retrofitting our buildings and spaces so that we are addressing the sort of climate issues and challenges that we are confronting and creating a sort of good public work force, if you will, that would sort of put New Yorkers to work in making that happen. I think that we can both address some of the economic things and also begin to address some of the infrastructure needs that we need to address in our city.

Greg Bensinger: More of a retrofitting than an additive infrastructure outline?

Yeah, I think we need to move on parallel tracks, right? We need to make sure not just that we’re retrofitting, but also that all new sort of development and construction is — sort of ratchet up the standards such that they are not actually causing harm and to move to a sort of zero sum game around that. But I think that, yeah, I mean, it would be a parallel track process. I think from the economic perspective, the investment would be in the creation of the jobs to address existing structures.

Mara Gay: Just a little bit of a pop quiz for you. Just answer best you can. What percentage of New York City schoolchildren are homeless or living in temporary shelter?

I think it’s about 10 percent. Is that right?

[In the 2019-20 school year, that figure was just under 10 percent, with about 111,600 homeless students attending district and charter schools in New York.]

Mara Gay: That’s right. What is the median sales price of a home or apartment in Brooklyn?

Oh, my gosh. The median sales price of a home or apartment.

Mara Gay: Home. Same thing, right? Home includes apartment.

I don’t know, half a million.

Mara Gay: Nine hundred thousand. What’s the median rent in Manhattan?

The median rent in Manhattan, $2,000.

Mara Gay: Three thousand. Where were you in the pandemic? Did you stay in New York or did you take off somewhere?

Yeah, I was at home, in my home, with three generations under one roof, with three people working as essential workers. And I was establishing and running a mutual aid organization.

Mara Gay: Cool. Who is No. 2 on your ballot right now?

You know, I’m not I’m not really sure right now. I think it’s been interesting to watch some of the other candidates. First of all, there’s a lot of daylight between me and most of the other candidates. It’s been interesting and fun to watch some of them move a little bit further to the left or whatever direction is closer. And so I’m curious and excited to see how much they can keep moving over the next 50 days or so.

Mara Gay: Thanks. Finally, I’m just curious, why do you think Andrew Yang has been doing so well so far in the polls?

I don’t know. You know, I think he’s got great name recognition. I think there’s a real sort of fun kind of air around him. And, you know, I think people are anxious to kind of put this pandemic behind them and just sort of move to this fun place. I think one of the things that worries me about that is that it doesn’t address some of the real sort of urgency around the most vulnerable and marginalized communities. And it sort of moves to sweep it under the rug. And I think this is an opportunity for us to actually, like I said at the beginning, confront that stuff and really build a city that’s better than it’s ever, ever been before.

Mara Gay: Well, this has been fascinating. I’ve enjoyed it, so I hope you did, too. Thank you so much for spending some time with us and good luck. I hope you have fun on the campaign trail.

Thank you so much. Stay safe and well, everybody. Thank you.

Mara Gay: Take care.

Bye.