Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — July Town Hall

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank

Speaker 1: you

Speaker 3: And

Speaker 6: for non-constituents who are attending, please be mindful of the time and space we're creating for constituents

Woman 7: to engage with their elected representative

We

Woman 7: are joined this evening by representatives from New York State Governor Kathy Hochul's office, as well as District Attorney Darcyl Clark's office. Thank you for joining

us. We're also joined by Bronx

Woman 7: Borough President Vanessa Gibson tonight. Oh, she's not here yet. Okay. We are also joined by State Senator Luis Sepulveda representing New York's 32nd Senate District

He is the chair of the

Woman 7: Committee on Cities. I invite Senator Sepulveda to

the stage for a brief remark

Speaker 8: Good

Speaker 9: evening, everyone

So happy to be

Speaker 10: here, of course, we know the great work that the Congresswoman has been doing for a long time here. We used to share a lot of the district, we don't share as much now, but I am still willing to follow her lead and a lot of the great stuff she does in Congress, defending the people in this community

Speaker 11: defending our rights, defending against the travesty that's the U.S. Supreme Court today and their

decisions

Speaker 12: to remove things

like, things

Speaker 12: that have

been, their destruction of

Speaker 12: affirmative

Speaker 13: action and no problem maintaining legacy appointments to universities, their destructions

of

Speaker 14: our basic

rights, their

Speaker 14: fight against the LGBT community, their fight against people of color, their fight to prevent us from voting

Speaker 12: their fight to prevent a fair

system, and

Speaker 12: their unwavering support of one of the biggest criminals that this country's had in the last 100 years, Donald Trump. You

Speaker 14: can applaud

that's okay. now i represent a

Speaker 14: smaller part of the district but i do have some of it if you live in bronx river houses

Speaker 11: or on the east a three-month side of the cross bronx expressway i still have the honor and privilege to represent all of you i believe the congresswoman represents that district still and there's nobody better to

Speaker 15: work with there's

no one

Speaker 15: who makes me more proud every day i go to and i see either reels or the republican party attacking

her or

Speaker 15: Fox News

Speaker 11: or The Post and they attack her because she's effective

because she

Speaker 11: cares about the people in this community and she will never waver in the support for all of you regardless of special interests or regardless of the fight that they take to her. And I want

Speaker 16: you to know, Congresswoman, and I want everyone here to know that I am one of your soldiers in these fights. God bless you and thank you very much

Thank

Speaker 17: you Senator Sepulveda for your remarks. I now invite Congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez to give her remarks

Thank you Nipah so much for

Speaker 18: opening us up and kind of emceeing

Speaker 19: us today. Here let me make sure I got this all lined up so that

Speaker 20: y'all can hear me. Can you all hear me

Woman 21: Okay great And thank you, Nipah. Let's everyone

let's give Nipah a big round of applause

Woman 21: A round of applause

for all of us

Woman 21: We also have such a great district staff around. If you could raise your hands as well for our district staff. They're the folks

Woman 22: that answer the phone when you call and try to deal with all the case work that comes in. So thank you all so, so much. So NEPA kind of laid out a little

Woman 21: bit today about what some of the topics that we want to go through today. This is our first physical town hall in Hunts Point since the new redistricting, and we're just so, so excited

to be

Woman 21: here. Hunts

Speaker 23 (higher-pitched voice): Point is a really special community to me. A lot of my family lives on Southern Boulevard

Speaker 24 (higher-pitched voice): like literally just a stone's throw away. This building is the same building that I started community organizing

Speaker 23 (higher-pitched voice): out of right when I graduated college as well. And so it feels really, really good to have

them

Speaker 23 (higher-pitched voice): gotten Hunts Point back

Speaker 25: in redistricting and for us to be organizing back out of here again. So thank you all so much for coming out here today. We're really

Woman 22: excited. So some of the things that we do in our town halls is that because there's always so much to cover, we try to give a little bit of a theme

Woman 26: to each town hall in terms of what we'll cover. So that month to month, you'll get a deeper dive into each issue. But that doesn't mean that any question is off the table. If you have any questions about anything else. i'm at the end feel free um again just write it down um we have slips of paper you can just raise your hand if you need one we do that in order to keep it um orderly and um and efficient at the end

but uh

Woman 26: as niva mentioned we're going to be talking a little bit about some of the some of the supreme court rulings that happened and some of the implications about that um then i you know our theme that we

Speaker 23 (higher-pitched voice): want to do for uh for this month's town hall is that we wanna talk a little bit about some of the environmental justice and renewable energy projects that we're trying to bring throughout the district. It's really important stuff, but a lot

Woman 26: of these projects sometimes aren't what is discussed in the news. It's because it's kind of slow moving, but it's really important information for you all to have. And then lastly, we want to celebrate the winner of our congressional art competition, who is here with her family, and we'll share with you all the art piece that she submitted, that one that is now hanging in the United States Capitol for the rest of the year. So we're very excited to share that. But let's jump in a little bit

Speaker 28: right away into some

Speaker 24 (higher-pitched voice): of these Supreme Court rulings. So we got three really bad Supreme Court rulings last week

The

Speaker 23 (higher-pitched voice): first was on affirmative action. The Supreme Court essentially struck down affirmative action last

Woman 26: week. And this, of course, does have implications for our community. You know, these are institutions that have historically excluded on the basis of race, gender and identity. And affirmative action was a program that was meant to make up for the harm of that and legacy of the

history

Woman 26: of discrimination in these institutions. The Supreme Court struck that down. But I do think it's important to know. And one of the things that we immediately said was affirmative action solely on the basis of race was what was overturned. But affirmative action for wealth and privilege, if your parents attended college or if your parents gave money to a school, that was untouched. Affirmative action based on geography was untouched. Affirmative action based on virtually any other factor was left untouched. The Supreme Court solely said that race and a person's racial identity is the only thing that's not allowed to be considered in the broad mix of developing an admissions process. And so, you know, that's one of the first things that we said was that legacy admissions is inherently unjust and unfair. And in fact, in terms of a response, what we're already seen is some legal some folks already starting to mount legal cases against legacy admissions in some of these institutions. So we will be keeping a close eye on that in terms of how that proceeds. The second thing that we saw very devastatingly was allowing, and this case was just ridiculous, was allowing for certain kinds of discrimination against LGBT people. What was so ridiculous about was that it was completely made

up

Woman 26: The individual held kind of was like a website designer and she wanted the right to decline. She wanted the right and the ability to decline or discriminate against a client because of their LGBT identity. The trick of it is though, is that the person that she identified was not gay, had no idea that he was even being named in the case. He is married to a woman. They have children. It was completely fabricated. And the Supreme Court took this up anyway, and they allowed for the ability to discriminate. And so, you know, our hope is that this case hopefully may experience, again, some other challenges and other forms. But these are very dangerous mounting

Speaker 24 (higher-pitched voice): rollbacks of our basic civil liberties that we are experiencing at the hands of the Supreme Court. Last year, We saw the rollback in

the

Woman 26: Dobbs decision of people's ability to have bodily autonomy. And what's very important in the overturning of Dobbs is that we're not just talking about abortion rights, but we're talking about our privacy rights overall as well. And that is a deep, deep concern to us all

But

Woman 26: even more concerning on top of that is that, and we'll get to the student debt relief as well, is that we are learning in the weeks before these decisions are coming down that these Supreme Court justices have been receiving financial benefits from billionaire benefactors with interests and cases before the Supreme Court

And

Woman 26: that is something that we have to put a stop to right now. We need to put a stop to it yesterday and the day before that

And some of the ways that we are

Woman 22: proposing to do that is that I believe that there should be congressional investigations

Woman 26: into the Supreme Court and into this unethical activity. The Senate asked Chief Justice Roberts to come before and testify before the Senate regarding these deeply distressed disturbing revelations and the Chief Justice said no. Refused to come before Congress to answer questions

Speaker 30 (higher-pitched voice): about this. If they refuse to come up, then I believe we should submit a subpoena in order to investigate

Woman 22: No person in the United States, no person should be above the law, including a Supreme Court Justice, period

T

Woman 22: That's our story and we're sticking to it. The last thing, the last ruling that I wanna kind of discuss with you all is the ruling

Woman 26: around student debt relief because what I wanna make sure that we understand as a community is that from reading the headlines, we would think, oh, you know, student loan debt relief, it's over, it's dead in the water, we're not going to get it. And so I want

to

Woman 26: communicate how important it is to say that is not true. We are going to fight for student loan debt relief. We

Woman 22: have a backup plan. We can do it, we can pursue it. We will not take no foreign answers

There

Woman 26: are some times in this work where as much as there are things that we wanna communicate everything publicly in real time, sometimes due to the sensitivity around situations, we're not always able to. But I can share with you all now that even in the weeks and days leading up to the ruling

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): I and several other members of the House of Representatives were in the White House negotiating with the Biden administration

Woman 26: about a plan B. We were very, very adamant in saying if the court overturns this

we

Woman 26: want to make sure that we don't take no for an answer and that we identify every alternative route and that that route be ready to go on day one within hours of a ruling coming down and um and i'm

very happy to

Woman 26: say that we made some steps along that if you if some of you may have been following within hours of the ruling coming down president biden stuck to his word and and he committed to pursuing a Plan B on student loan forgiveness. Of course, there are some differences between what we would have proposed and what he implemented. But the

but the

Woman 26: fact of the

Speaker 30 (higher-pitched voice): matter is, is that the most important part was that commitment to implementing a plan B. And

so I

Woman 22: want to communicate with you all about what this is going to look like so far and also some of what we're

Woman 26: continuing to push on the administration to implement. So from the debt, the big debt limit fight that you all may have been hearing in the news where Republicans held the entire U.S. economy hostage in exchange for a whole bunch of things that even they couldn't identify, to be honest, one of those things was that they forced a restarting of the student loan payments around September 1st. So that was kind of baked in already from the debt limit deal that Republicans had forced. So what is going to happen is that, yes, student loan repayments will technically begin on September 1st. However

part of

Woman 26: what we're doing here is that

what

Woman 26: was struck down by the Supreme Court was not what President Biden did specifically, but how he did it. He implemented student loan forgiveness through a program known as through a legislation known as the HEROES Act, which was during the pandemic. We have been pushing on him to use the Higher Education Act in order to forgive the student loan forgiveness. So we always felt like that should have been plan

A, but

Woman 26: then that makes it an even better plan B because that's what we wanted to do the whole entire time. And so we're going to use the Higher Education Act, but that's going to take some time to come online. So what President Biden is doing is that he's implementing a 12-month on-ramp period. So these payments technically start on September 1st, but if you miss a payment, it will not go to a credit reporting agency

Your

Woman 26: credit will not be dinged if you miss a student loan payment. Your credit will not be dinged if you're late. Nothing will happen in that department if you miss a student loan payment in the next 12 months. However, what will happen, and this is the part that we're kind of pushing back on the Biden administration on, is that interest will start to accrue on September 1st

so

Woman 26: what we are proposing is to freeze interest and maintain 0% interest on student

Speaker 25: loans for the next 12 months

and

Woman 22: so that's one of the big

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): major pieces now I also want to zoom out a little bit because

Woman 26: some people very rightfully bring up the point

of

Woman 26: well, what happens when we wipe this debt and people still need to take out these huge loans to go to college? And I just wanna make sure that we're looking at this in the bigger picture, because in the bigger picture, what we should be doing is wiping out student loan debt and implementing tuition-free public colleges and universities so that people don't have to go into debt to get education again

That

Woman 26: is how we actually solve this problem once and for all. And if you want to, you know, if we have tuition-free public colleges and universities, which we once had, by the way, if we have that, then the option to attend a private university and take on that debt, that's a separate option. But everybody should have

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): the ability to pursue higher education free of cost in order to maintain competitiveness in today's economy. Period

So I wanted to

Speaker 32: make sure that

Woman 26: we explained what that plan B looks like. Again, we are continuing to push the Biden administration. He put in, you know, they're saying 12 months. We really want them to ramp that up faster than 12 months. They're saying, you know, interest will accrue. We really want them to also wipe out that interest during that period, especially because if you are eligible for student loan forgiveness

which is

Woman 26: Many, many people in our community, by the way, you shouldn't be paying interest on debt that's going to get forgiven anyway. And so, I mean, you shouldn't be paying interest, period. But especially in those cases, you know, I think it's really important that that people don't get kind of shortchanged in that way. The other thing with respect to student loans. is that the income-based repayment program is changing. It's changing for the better. So it used to be the case that 10% of your discretionary income had to go to that income-based repayment if you had that kind of student loan payment structure. That 10% has now been cut in half to 5%. And so that's going to be a big relief. Um, and also, um, you know, it's not considered for repayment. And that also means that if you're making $15 an hour, you will not be, you will not need to make monthly payments

Speaker 33: at all under

Woman 26: income-based repayment. Um, so it, in addition to that, it decreases the repayment sunset period for borrowers with loans of less than $12,000 from borrowers. 20 years to 10 years, which means that if you are a borrower with a loan balance, it will be forgiven after 10 years

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): for each individual loan under $12,000. So those are some of the important changes and updates that were announced in the last one to two weeks since the ruling. And we really wanted to make sure that you all had that information

So

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): after the rulings, we want to, I also want to run through some of the latest projects and sustainability projects that we're trying to bring here to

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): the Bronx and throughout the rest of the district in Queens as well

So

Speaker 35: here is, I don't

know if

Woman 36: you all may be able to see this, but this is a map of the Bronx side renewable energy projects that we've been working

on. I

Speaker 25: can't, I usually move a lot more during tunnels, but I can't because we've got our live stream here and I need folks tuning in from home to be able

Woman 36: to listen. But you can see all of these different projects that we've been

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): working

on. And

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): I wanna reiterate that renewable energy projects and bringing in these projects to the community It's really important, yes, economically. It's really important for us in saving money on our electricals

Speaker 37 (higher-pitched voice): It's really important for us in creating good union, high-paying jobs right here in the Bronx. But it is also

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): especially important for our environmental justice issues that we face here. In the South Bronx, we have some of the highest childhood aspirates in the

world. that

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): childhood

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): asthma and all of these sky-high asthma conditions and other respiratory

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): issues is because of fossil fuels it's because of fossil fuels it's because the cross bronze

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): expressway has so much diesel trucking and all of this brought him through and that dates back to the years and times

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): with robert moses and the way that he designed this area goes back to the era when the

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): bronze was burning um we also

have

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): Tons of issues with construction, with old buildings that haven't been maintained. And so there's off-gassing that are happening there. And so us bringing in this renewable infrastructure is not just economic and planetary

but

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): it's to save our lungs, it's to save our kids, and it's to restore our health and add years to our lives and quality of the years to our lives. And so this is very multidimensional and is one of the reasons why we wanted to get to work on this. right away because this is going to have some of the

Speaker 25: immediate turnarounds and we're also going to save money on our medical bills down the line as well

So

Woman 36: just very quickly, we want to run through what some of these projects we've been supporting. The first is Capping the Cross Bronx, which we are really, really

Speaker 39: excited about

And let's hear

Speaker 40: it for Locking the Bronx and Milka. You know, Milka and Jay, if you take a look back at some of the folks who are waving their

Woman 36: hands. If you are interested, these are some of the most audacious organizers I have

Speaker 41: met in the Bronx, period, like

Speaker 42: incredible

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): incredible work. If you are interested in joining the Coalition for Capping the Cross Bronx, definitely talk to Milka back there in the back. She's wearing the Loving the Bronx shirt, I believe, but there's so many other projects that we will soon discuss as well. But the whole premise of Capping the Cross Bronx is that one of the big reasons that we face so many respiratory issues in the

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): Bronx is because of the Cross Bronx Expressway

The

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): proposal in capping the cross Bronx is to take the below level areas of the cross Bronx, the parts that kind of, if you ever, you know, driven or taken a cab or whatever in the cross Bronx, the areas that you have like these

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): two big walls on either side of you, those are usually the below grade level. The idea is to actually cap that area

Speaker 24 (higher-pitched voice): with green space. Because what often happens is that all of that

Woman 43: trucking, all of those emissions, all of that, it permeates up. And there's so many residential

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): areas that that gas and that all of that emissions go off into. So it's a major, major contributor to respiratory issues in the Bronx. So the proposal is to add green spaces

Speaker 24 (higher-pitched voice): over those below grade areas. and those green spaces will not only

reduce

Speaker 24 (higher-pitched voice): our respiratory

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): issues, but also added green spaces increases public safety. It adds to personal and individual health outcomes. And it really is a justice issue as well. We know from so many different perspectives and studies that access to green space is a major indicator for, again, health, safety, and many other issues as well. And so we need more parts in the Bronx. We can always use more green space in the Bronx. And so we have been starting the long process. This is a very big, audacious project, but we have started the

Speaker 45 (higher-pitched voice): process of raising the possibility of this federally. We are working alongside our other Bronx representatives

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): Adriana Espaillat, Reggie Torres, et cetera, in trying to make sure that we make this a reality. So we're very excited about that capping of the cross

Bronx

Speaker 46: Another

Woman 36: project that we've been working on is some of the Hunts Point redevelopment

We

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): have the biggest produce market, public-private produce market in the world here in Hunts Point. And this has been a source of a lot of the respiratory issues as well. We have all of this diesel trucking coming in and it's to provide all of the produce that basically feeds New York City

And

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): so what we have done is that we worked with Secretary Buttigieg and in support for a $110 million US Department of Transportation grant in order to electrify all those diesel trucks. And so what we want to do is install industrial chargers for those big trucks because this technology is

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): developing. and so what we want to do is that instead of being in a reactive place we want to be in a proactive place we are starting to invest in infrastructure that does not exist today but will exist in the next five to ten years so that

Speaker 24 (higher-pitched voice): when it rolls out we will not be the last to get it we will be the first to get it and that's what we're

doing here And so we're

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): really looking at that. That is $110 million that we're bringing right here to Hunts Point

Speaker 45 (higher-pitched voice): And a lot of that investment is also going to be

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): partnered with and guided by not just elected officials, but grassroots and community organizations to make sure that investment is going to the right places as well. Speaking

Speaker 35: of some

Woman 36: of that, you know, getting ahead of infrastructure as well, our next project that we've been working on that's actually going online this summer is at

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): SUNY Maritime in Throgs Neck. We have helped, we've worked with the local SUNY Maritime College in order to create an offshore wind training program. And what this is going to do is that what we are starting to see is that we're developing offshore wind in New York and across all the East Coast. But this is very technical and technically advanced kind of construction and building trades and more

Woman 43: kinds of skill sets. So with offshore wind, you need to not only be an electrician, like a really good electrician, but you also now need our electricians to be able to scuba dive. because you're building these offshore wind turbines and they have to be built on pylons, like these big cement things under water that you then put a turbine on top. And then you have

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): to wire that back to the city in order to get the electricity delivered to homes that we

need

Speaker 48: And so with very

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): technically advanced skills, that means really, really high paying jobs

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): And so, again, one thing that we did was that we worked with our public college right here in the Bronx to start developing an offshore wind training

Woman 43: program to help people train in developing those specific skill sets. And we've been working with them in order

Speaker 49 (higher-pitched voice): to bring that online, and now it goes online this summer. And so we're very excited about that. That's about

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): 800,000 in creating a public educational program. and what's even better is that we've also been supporting

Speaker 50: new york offshore wind so once again we're building that infrastructure that jobs infrastructure so that people in the bronx are able to have access to that jobs training first instead of last

Woman 52: and so we're going we're trying

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): to attract investment and training in really high skilled

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): union track dignified jobs as well and so

that goes online this summer

Speaker 53: and then lastly one of the things that we just started working on is um working with the

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): epa around the cast gilbert station uh which loving the bronce and youth ministries for peace peace and justice have also been doing a lot of development uh work around and so some of you may recognize the cast gilbert station uh in the bronce it's not too far from here and it's It's like this gorgeous old station, but you can tell that it's been abandoned and we drive past it all the time. You guys know what I'm talking about, right? Because it's so beautiful, but also like no one's been using it for years. And it's always this question of what is this

And

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): so we've been working with our grassroots organizations in conjunction with the EPA because the issue is that it's something known as a brownfield site. There's a lot of waste that could potentially be harmful without it being cleaned up. And so we want to turn that into public space that everyday people can

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): enjoy. And so we've been working with

the EPA. to

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): try to get a grant to our community organizations

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): to pursue that cleanup so that we can lay the foundation for that use. Additionally, this also intersects with the Amtrak stations that are coming into the community. And so people would be able to have a place to spend time, et cetera, before they get on the train to go to Manhattan, I should say, and come back And the stations as well are so important because these are going to cut down our commutes by up to 60

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): minutes, 60 minutes. And so our fight with that right now is to make sure that we get those online, that they're dignified, but that also that we protect people's access to housing around that as well, because we don't want that to then mean that these are the next areas we're going to be gentrifying for displacement. These are

Speaker 50: being built for us, and we deserve to stay here

And

Woman 43: some of the other projects that we've been working on, maybe we can go back to that map a little bit. Up there

that's

Speaker 56: Co-op City. Due to some of the investments from the Inflation Reduction Act and the infrastructure bill, we are working with Co-op

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): City because Co-op City, a lot of people don't know, has their own power plant. And it's remarkable. And they not only develop their own energy, but they actually sometimes when they overdevelop energy, they lease it, they sell that energy back to the city. So they actually power our local public schools and other public institutions as well

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): And so we're working to see if we

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): can use some of those federal dollars to introduce more renewable energy development at co-op city to make everyone healthier. Right underneath that is something known as an organization, NIDOT, created community-scale Bronx battery storage, which is really important 'cause it can help us stave off power outages and more. And so we are working on expanding that battery storage site so that more people can have more power stability, especially during the summertime. We've got, let's see, Con-Ed, we've got a reliable, on the Queens side, we are working on a, we just finished, Con-Ed just finished building a six mile long transmission line in Queens to carry increasingly renewable energy as well, which will help us retire inefficient and polluting power plants. in the area particularly peaker plants and lastly with hunts point electric charging stations the point as the point cdc along with local partners won a 10 million dollar award from new york serda to establish the electric truckers cooperative which will allow for the creation of a refrigerated battery

electric fleet So we

Speaker 37 (higher-pitched voice): are working to clean up this air really fast as soon as possible. And so there's going to be a lot of changes

Woman 43: happening in the

Speaker 37 (higher-pitched voice): next

Speaker 58: couple of years

And then

Speaker 59: lastly, we're

Speaker 38 (higher-pitched voice): very, very excited

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): We want to show off our talent in our community. So every year there is a congressional art competition that occurs. and each

unit

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): year we get several submissions that come in we get many submissions from folks to be able to win that competition

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): winning that competition is a very high honor your work of art gets hung up in the united states capital for an entire year you are invited down to washington um it is

Speaker 60: wonderful for our

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): for our kids and for our um for students who are applying to competitive colleges and universities and this year's winner

Speaker 61: is Prisca Boadu and this is her work right up here and I'd like to introduce her to Pamela

Prisca, would you like to say a few words? Would you

Speaker 62: like to say a few words, Prisca, or are you

okay

Speaker 38 (higher-pitched voice): She's good. She's good. Prisca's work was called No Place Like

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): Home, and as you can see, you know, we'll leave it up so that if you can't see from the angle, you can take a look on the way out, but it's such a beautiful work of a family, and we got the train in the background, and we just felt like it was

so It's

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): such a wonderful ode to our Bronx community, all the families that make it up. And so we're just so

Speaker 38 (higher-pitched voice): proud of Chris that she came down to the Capitol. Her mother is here

as well

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): and we're just so proud to be able to welcome them to the capitol and and if any of you happen to be you know making a visit to Washington if you go to the house of

Speaker 45 (higher-pitched voice): representatives you will see this

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): work in person so

Speaker 64: with that

Speaker 45 (higher-pitched voice): I think we're ready

Speaker 65: for our Q&A portion right

thank

Speaker 64: you

all right thank

Speaker 67: you so much Congresswoman

Speaker 68 (higher-pitched voice): so we will move on to the Q&A portion now I will read out the names of the constituents who have the questions and my colleague will come over to you with the microphone okay so we have Maria Torres oh

Speaker 69: Maria all

Speaker 70: right

there hi

Speaker 70: I

I didn't say that. I

Speaker 70: thought it was all

of a sudden. Okay, so I have a

Speaker 73: question. Thank you again. - No, of course. - I'm very excited that this is a first time home

Speaker 74: here. But my question has to do with housing and AMIs

Speaker 75: and HUD

Speaker 74: So I said, what can you do to get HUD to change

Speaker 76 (higher-pitched voice): how AMIs are evaluated so that lower-income neighbors are better reflected, represented, represented

and

Speaker 76 (higher-pitched voice): affordable housing would really be affordable at this point unfortunately we're locked

in with westchester income and so when we get affordable housing it's never really at the rate yeah thank you

Speaker 77: thank

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): you you know this is such a a crucial question that um that comes up often as well uh for folks who may not know you know sometimes when you see these affordable housing "affordable

Woman 36: housing" that comes up and

they're like

Woman 36: Oh, it's affordable for incomes up to $150,000. And you're like, what? And

that is

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): often due to something known as the AMI, the Area Median Income. And what gets designated as affordable by HUD is based on this formula known as an area median income. And basically they say, OK, we can designate something as affordable based on the average of the incomes in. in that area. The problem is that it's very wide. And so that area goes all the way up, as Maria had mentioned. It's this big circle that goes as high as Westchester and as low as downtown Manhattan. And so if you take all of that as an area median income, it ends up being way higher than what our actual neighborhood

is

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): And so we've been very supportive trying to shrink the zone of what is designated as the area median income. That is very, very, very hard to do in the house and to build support for us. We have been working with Congresswoman Yvette Clark on that in the past, but in the meantime, while we work on that federally, and while we also work with HUD on that federally, what we also can fight for is that

when

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): these projects are proposed, that we fight for a percentage of the area median income

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): So instead of saying, okay, these units can all be at 100% AMI, we should

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): fight for there being a larger portion of those, a larger portion of those units being at 50% of AMI, which may get us closer to what the actual neighborhood income is. But this is a very major issue because

one of

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): the reasons why developers do this is because there's a tax incentive for that AMI. And so you can set that affordability really high. You almost get the rent that you would charge market rate for some of these, but you're not actually helping the people that really need housing the most. And so we've been really supportive of work to reform and change the AMI formula because

You

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): know, that level of that wide of an area is fine if you're in a more rural area or even if you're in a more suburban area where things don't fluctuate as much. But we also live in a community where one of the lowest income zip codes is a 15-minute subway ride from one of the highest

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): income zip codes in America. And so when you have the South Bronx right there next to the Upper East Side, we have to make sure that we um lower that radius to reflect the communities that we live in and so we're working we've been uh fighting hard to reduce that ami but we also want to make sure that we can implement city level solutions right away while we work on that federally as well thank

you thank you maria -

Speaker 83: Thank

Speaker 84: you, I have a next team. We then have some questions, oh

Speaker 85: sorry. - My

Speaker 87: pleasure. - Thank you, thank

you for

Speaker 87: coming. - New York State is from the Thomas

Speaker 88 (higher-pitched voice): Annacoby's office theater wedding or David Towers, which is not a new government and discovered during the day for the year 2019 through March 30th of 2022

Speaker 89: 31.3 million in business management. As a result of that, 20% of our maintenance-- 20%-- we faced a

Speaker 88 (higher-pitched voice): 20

Speaker 90: maintenance increase

Speaker 88 (higher-pitched voice): which we felt a second bad. So what we did was we filed for the list of conditions through the ACR asking for rent reduction because the

Speaker 91: place is actually falling apart. And this is all reflected in that order

Now

Speaker 91: what I would like to know is, what is the

Speaker 88 (higher-pitched voice): government going to hold these individuals responsible to recuperate that money? Because as a result, it's falling on the back of my shareholders. Me, myself, my records increased by $300

Speaker 92: That's a matter of me paying my card for, to recuperate my car. I have to recuperate my car. I've got to have a roof over my hand. And then my second question is, we also had the water test in J.P. Towers. I took the J.P. Towers to pour for the water, and I actually wanted to sink. But what did I really want? The

Speaker 93: water is still very much brown. And in order for me to take a bath in my home, I have to put a baby wipe over the bathtub. So when you speak about environmental

I

Speaker 88 (higher-pitched voice): have it right in my house. I cannot use the water to cook with. I can't wash my teeth with

it

Speaker 95: If I take it back, I pretty

much

Speaker 92: gotta get out real fast because my skin is dry. I got a standard description of a hydro-corrhizal. So what I would like to see is the government holding the child's feet to the fire and make it

pretty much important

Speaker 97: Thank you

Thank you. Thank

Speaker 98: you. Thank you for bringing that up. No, no, of course, we're happy to dive in

Speaker 45 (higher-pitched voice): Yeah, I mean, it's just, it's unacceptable. No one should ever live with those conditions and putting, you know, baby wipes

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): over faucets. It's, and this is what is making our community sick. You know, when we talk about a lot of, like, building and construction, it includes that. And when we talk about environmental justice, you know, a lot of times environmentalism was thought about, like, hugging trees and saving polar bears and, you know, out in the wilderness, and conservation work is important, but environmental justice

the

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): way it shows up in our community is in the water that we drink and the air that we breathe

and

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): our right to not be poisoned um by special interests and also you know by by public institutions that withhold information and so thank you thank

Speaker 98: you so um i'm happy i'm happy to

Speaker 101 (higher-pitched voice): take a look at this and see uh what next uh what next steps we are able to be supportive of thank you

Thank

Speaker 103: you very

much

Speaker 104: Could you speak up a little bit? - Sure

Speaker 105: Great. - So I'm a big supporter of the old, they put it for you, but this is the first one to see you in person so very excited. I didn't have much of a question, but this is the story, so I have to

ask you a question. Nowadays, the largest world of them, especially the tech companies, they're very hard to have a

Speaker 105: large amount of employees. Almost for an hour, it doesn't make the situation better, worse than the situation. Even if it's just laying off some bodies, but it's not easy to do in countries that have a lot of information on their own, is there anything that Congress or the U.S. Congress was supposed to do to make sure? these big companies who have millions of millions of dollars. We give them millions of dollars. Mexico, still there are a lot of people that impacts our community

their livelihoods, their families, everything. Is there anything of this person to you, or how

Speaker 109: does this call them to

Speaker 110: sell

them to the companies

Speaker 110: Of course, thank you, thank you so much. You know, I think this

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): issue oftentimes is kind of like a labor, has labor similarities to actually inflation, which is that there are a lot of companies that are making things harder for working

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): people, not because they need to, but because they can

For

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): example, with inflation and rising prices, we are seeing that

you know

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): I mean, you go to the grocery store now and it's like a hundred dollars buys you like four things. It's crazy. And when we dig into this, we see that it's actually, you know, they blame everything under the sun, gas prices and labor and things like that. When you actually break it down, it's profiteering

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): That's really just what it is. They're charging more because they think they can charge more and they want to squeeze people more for their shareholders

And

Speaker 111: when we see with

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): these mass layoffs, it's also very similar. There aren't really conditions that we see out there

that

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): really explain why these companies are justified in laying off all these people in a sector, but they

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): are. And so on a federal level, labor law, part of it, there's a couple of things at play. One of these things is that there's an antitrust issue at the core of this. When you have a big company

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): like Facebook that owns Facebook and Instagram, and now they have this new Twitter platform that's coming

out

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): What they are able to do is monopolize that

Speaker 112: market, and they have way

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): more control over

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): the skill and the talent in that market as well. And so I think antitrust is a part of this conversation. Some of these companies are

Speaker 83: too big, and

they do need

Speaker 83: to be

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): broken up. in our democracy but it's also creating issues in our economy as well um we

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): we see this you know there are a lot of these big companies that when they propose a merger or when they want to get bigger they'll say oh like this is very good for people this is very good for jobs it actually reduces the amount of jobs um and it creates a lot of you know a lot of other kinds of issues and lots of people get laid off laid off very often um after a merger and so you know part

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): of this is an antitrust issue, we do need to do a lot more in expanding labor rights federally, absolutely. Whether it's the right to unionize, whether it's passing the PRO Act in the House and the Senate, as well as many other areas for expanding labor. But

Woman 52: I do also want to say, like I always try to pair what we're working on with this issue, with also creating awareness about what rights you are

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): available to right now. In the state of New York, we have a law on the books that says if you are a company that employs, if you are a large company that employs beyond a certain amount of people, you have to give notice, public notice before three, if you are planning layoffs, I believe three months. And what a lot of these companies do is that they'll post it, but they keep it really, really

quiet

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): and so you often don't know where to go where to look and you know you might show up to work one

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): day and you know i mean

i hope

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): this doesn't happen to anyone here but a person could show up one day and get laid off and it takes them by surprise but actually their company posted three months ago that they were going to do that and so you should know your rights here in the state of new york if you work for a company that is an eligible size and they don't post it you are eligible for recourse as well. So it's very

Woman 52: important that you look up if your company followed along on that. And if they didn't, then you may have certain recourse available to you. So

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): those are companies that are based in New York and California as well. And so that covers a lot of tech companies And in fact, that was one of the things that we saw

Speaker 114: potentially with Twitter, right

When

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): Elon Musk said, oh, we're going to lay off all these people, we had to say, hey, you know, was this posted? And if it wasn't, then you're in violation of labor law. And so there are a lot of federal laws that we're pushing to protect people. But even in the absence of that, because we have a Republican majority in the House, state laws are strong and especially in the state of New York and in the state of California where a lot of these companies are located and they also have to adhere to that as well so I just want to make sure you

Speaker 101 (higher-pitched voice): know your rights in

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): that

Speaker 115: respect

too

Speaker 117: So, in

Speaker 119: terms

Woman 36: of small businesses in our community, there's so much to be done

Speaker 35: i know a lot of people may say covet is over it's not over

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): covet is not over it's not over health-wise and it's not over economically as well a lot of our small businesses still are contending

Speaker 121: with so many of the challenges from covet and shutdowns and and back rents and all of this and so there's

Woman 52: a couple of different things one one thing that we're actually starting to do this is an area where we're actively starting to build out more is that we want want

to create

Woman 52: a um we're

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): working on creating a fuller list of small businesses to be able to get direct outreach from our office and so i believe that's a project that

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): you'll be if you all aren't signed on to our newsletter please sign on to it because we will be sending out information around that um because a lot of times we will get information from the small business administration and we need to disseminate that information very quickly and so making sure that you all are connected to our office is

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): really really important. During COVID, we fought very, very hard for PPP loans. Congresswoman Nidia Velasquez is the chairwoman or was the chairwoman of the Small Business Committee, but now she's the ranking member because the Republicans chair the committees now with the majority. And so we were able to help offer some of that PPP language. And, you know, that first round, we really fought against those inequities because, you know, like really well-connected and wealthier businesses were able to access those PPP loans first. And so

Speaker 24 (higher-pitched voice): we fought really hard to reverse that and to get our communities first at the table

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): There are so many grants. and we've kind of discussed this before. There are so many grants that are available

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): to our small businesses. I don't think Daniel is here. Daniel's not here, but Daniel in our office, he runs grant workshops all the time. And we are more than happy to get that information out to you all in terms of what grants we can connect our community to. It's very

You

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): know, there's so much out there and it's really important for us that we connect our

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): community directly To those opportunities because it's it's like a maze, right? But there's so many contracts a lot of people don't know how that the federal government is federal government contractors make up an enormous amount of our economy. Small businesses that contract with the federal government make

up

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): billions and billions of dollars, it's a shockingly high amount. And so our communities should be connected to that. Our low income entrepreneurs, minority and women owned

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): businesses, all sorts of folks, underserved communities. And so we have a lot of resources and links to share with you all around that. And whenever we get kind of breaking information, we try to also disseminate that to our community

Speaker 49 (higher-pitched voice): as well. Like when PPP loans first came out, that night or the next night that the application went online

Speaker 35: while

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): all of the more privileged businesses were getting that information kind of straight from their really high level banking

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): associates, we were also making the information public as well. So we want to make sure that we develop those pipelines and make sure you all are signed up to our newsletter because we share a lot of that information there. Thank

you

Speaker 126: C

Cynthia Shoebrick, Cynthia Shoebrick

Speaker 126: Cynthia Shoebrick. - Cynthia

Speaker 127: Shoebrick, okay

Speaker 126: Hello

Speaker 128: Hello

Speaker 129: Hello

Hi

Speaker 128: Hi. - Hi. - Hi

Hi. - Hi

Speaker 131: Hi

Speaker 130: Hi

Speaker 132: Hi

Speaker 131: H

Speaker 130: Hi. - Hi. - Hi. - Hi. - Hi

T

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): Thank you, thank you for bringing this up

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): Passports are now, so when we have our case work, you know, all the things that people contact our office about, passports used to be a very small slipper of that. It now makes up about 30 to 40% of all of our cases

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): the need around passports has just exploded, but we have been able to help some folks around passports, and

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): sometimes we're able to do it quickly. Now, the first thing I'll say just as a PSA to everybody, the passport backlog is very long right now. It's about three months

there has

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): been an explosion in travel and a lot of people

Speaker 134 (higher-pitched voice): during covid obviously they weren't checking their passports and so a lot of people's passports

Woman 52: expired and such during covid and so there's been like this explosion in applications but if you apply in february then your passport is due And so we'd be happy to have our district office, some of our folks reach out to you

Speaker 35: Pardon? Okay. So then I'll

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): make sure that we follow up with you and I'll make sure that we resolve it. But it is a, I will say it is a mess right now. We've been, even our

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): office has been having trouble getting through to the New York passport agency. We've been trying really, really hard. It used to be even, we could intervene in three situations. One, if your passport application was overdue, or two, or rather two situations, or two, if there was like a life

Speaker 136: or death

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): emergency. But it's been

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): getting harder and harder because of the pressure on applications. So given the urgency of your travel, we're trying to make sure to get that squared away. We have had success in some cases, but this week in particular has been really, really difficult

If I

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): could urge everyone to just do one thing when they get home is to go home and if you have a passport, open it and see the expiration date. Please don't wait until you're looking to do a trip or anything like that. because the timelines are really long. So if your passport is expiring in the next year, next year, just send out that application now, and then you'll have it for years to come. But then secondly, if you don't have a passport

Take

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): this as a moment to just apply for one anyway

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): You never know

Speaker 139: when you might need

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): one, and you don't want to wait until you need one in order to get it. But that being said, you know, if you apply for it and you're given a processing time, that

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): processing time should be honored. And we always try to make sure to

Speaker 140: interfere or rather intervene in cases where people's applications aren't moving the way that they should. Thank

you. Thank

Speaker 141: you. Maybe

that young thing

Speaker 142: Hi

Speaker 87: Thank you, Xavier. My question

Speaker 143: is to speak to your-- I'm speaking about the cafeteria. The other stuff that

is-- the

Speaker 143: part of you is that they can reach the minimum wage for a student to take back the house. Basically

because

Speaker 143: Prices are going to hide the wages across the board on the press

And

Speaker 145: that's

Speaker 143: where it's certainly

needed

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, raising the minimum wage has long been on the platform. Here's

what I

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): think we need, though, is that it has been $15 an hour for like the demand here is $15 an hour for like 11 years. We're past that now. You know, I think we're now at the We're now at the stage where 15 an hour now is the seven an

Speaker 57: hour that it was back when people were first started doing 15 So

I

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): think we need

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): to raise that commitment personally It has been part of The agenda now. I think this is the frustration that we have $15 minimum wage passed the house it is the United States Senate that's blocking it and It is also Democrats in the United States

Senate and So

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): I'm not here to just finger point at Republicans all day. There are

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): Democrats that voted against including the $15 minimum wage in the American Rescue Plan. When people got those checks and when we got child tax credits and all that, that same bill, we have proposed to include raising the minimum wage in that. And there were, I think

Maybe

Speaker 31 (higher-pitched voice): a dozen Democrats. I could have the number wrong in the United States Senate that voted to delay that and put that off. And so what we really need to do is push on Democrats in the Senate in making sure that that we raise the wage. This is like a life of death issue at this point. I mean, like we're saying, people are choosing between medicine and food and baby formula. This is not a way to live, not in this country and not in the United States, not when the wealthiest people in this country are experiencing more wealth. I mean, CEO compensation has actually

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): reached obscene levels. We have never seen something like this in American history, the level of CEO compensation to worker compensation. It's just wrong. Like, I'm sorry, but it's like, I don't know how some people sleep at night wrong. Like, it's not okay to

put people

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): in this position. And so, yes, it's part of the platform, but we need to make sure that we push every Democrat in the Senate on this, because we actually have House Democrats behind us that pass the House. We need House Democrats behind. on this. Our Democrats here in New York were most supportive of it, Senator Schumer and children. I mean, this is New York. I don't think, this is New York. I don't know if we could get away with not supporting that, right? But it's really important that we build support for that. And

Speaker 101 (higher-pitched voice): frankly, I do. And also it needs to be indexed to cost of living. We can't be doing this every all the

Woman 151: time, constantly putting people into this position. So yeah

Speaker 134 (higher-pitched voice): so I think minimum wage is really, really important. Raising it is important

I

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): think it needs to be even higher than the 15 that has been put out there because it's just becoming really unsustainable for

Speaker 101 (higher-pitched voice): a lot of people

at this point. - Any

Speaker 152: questions

Speaker 153: Is

Speaker 154: it really

Speaker 158: possible

to spare

Speaker 156: T

Speaker 159: The Supreme Court, is that really

Speaker 156: possible

Speaker 78: So I think this is an excellent question. I'm gonna answer in, there's like two ways. There's like

Woman 151: the political consideration, but then there's also the actual mechanism of how we would even do that. In terms of the mechanism

Speaker 49 (higher-pitched voice): the Supreme Court does not control how big it is, how many seats there are. And for

Woman 151: clarification

one of the

Woman 151: principles behind one of the proposals behind

Speaker 134 (higher-pitched voice): expanding the court would be for there to be one justice for each one of the

Woman 151: district circuit courts. Right now there's only nine justices for

I

Speaker 160: believe

Woman 151: 13 district circuit courts but regardless one of the proposals is for there to be more justices

So

Woman 151: what I will say is that it is not

Speaker 161: up to the Supreme Court as

Speaker 34 (higher-pitched voice): to whether we expand the court or not. That's not within their power

Speaker 49 (higher-pitched voice): That power lies solely within the presidency and within Congress that would approve

Speaker 163: those

Speaker 50: expanded

Speaker 49 (higher-pitched voice): seats

Now, So is

Speaker 49 (higher-pitched voice): it possible? Yes. It's possible to do that independently of the court. Now, politically, that's our problem. Right. Is that President Biden has indicated that he is not interested in court expansion

And

Woman 151: also we have a type that's not interested in eliminating the filibuster, which

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you