Community News
Black Agenda 25:Assemblywoman Stefani Zinerman encourages Trump-era community building

By Nayaba Arinde
Editor at Large
@NayabaArinde1
With President Donald Trump’s slim margin in the house, mid-terms in two years may be both the brake and the motivation.
As the new administration begins with threats to health care, social services, and benefits, Brooklyn Assemblywoman Stefani Zinerman urged people to “Harness that fear and trauma, and move forward with it.”
With a 2-year window, Trump is ramming through hundreds of executive orders. He is attempting to make good on his campaign immigration deportation promise, with nationwide ICE raids arresting and deporting hundreds of undocumented residents targeting big cities like New York, Newark, and Chicago. Trump is looking to fire hundreds of federal workers.
He dismissed 18 inspectors general overnight, saying that they did not “align” with what he wanted to do with his administration.
The 47th President is pushing for higher tariffs on imported goods, but his promise to lower grocery costs on day one sits on the shelf.
Meanwhile, a Seattle judge temporarily halted Trump’s proposed policy of banning birthright citizenship.
As Trump disbanded the Diversity, Equity (DEI) and Inclusion policy, Target and Walmart were among the national chains that did the same.
Politico reports that Trump has ordered a “sweeping freeze of federal aid,” quoting that the Office of Management and Budget announced that “federal agencies would be forced to suspend payments–with the exception of Social Security and Medicare.” Would Medicaid, FAFSA, and other social welfare agencies be cut too? All this as Trump tries to finagle a third term for himself.
Motivation for resistance?
“I think there’s a mixed bag because there’s a lot of people who voted for him,” Assemblywoman Zinerman told Our Time Press. “I think some of them are realizing and having an epiphany that ‘Oh, he meant me too.’ They were thinking that he was only going after one group of people, but now they’re seeing how it’s going to impact them.”
The 56th District rep and longtime civil rights and justice advocate said, “We know that Project 25 is in play, and for Black people, it has been in play since we were enslaved. I think at this moment, what we need to remember is that strife and struggle and overcoming – that is our superpower.
There’s no other explanation as to why we’ve been able to survive this onslaught of terror and trauma we have dealt with in this country. As our parents used to say, ‘Believe people when they show you who they are,’ and we knew that in the first Trump administration. So, there should be no surprise to anybody that he is keeping his word to repay the people whom he respects and who share his values.
Their values don’t include equity and justice especially when it comes to people like us. So last year, we began dissecting Project 2025 at a meeting that started in August, and we continue those conversations.”
But she said, “We quickly pivoted from Project 2025 to Our Agenda 2025 – not so much focusing on what he’s going to do, but how we plan on living and protecting ourselves and continue to progress.”
So they looked at “What is it that Black folks need to do in coalition? And do the work that our forefathers and foremothers told us to do. We are not taking care of families, we are in broken fellowship with members of the community, and now is the time for us to bring that back together.”
The Brooklynite determined, “We have some key people in place. We have some strategies for progress and protection, and people need to come outside so that we can go into the woodshed and have those conversations.”
There is hope, though, Assemblywoman Zinerman told Our Time Press.
“It’s two years until the mid-terms. We always look to the presidency, but if we don’t do what we have to do now, it will be worse in 4 years because, in 2 years, there are some people in the federal government that need to be replaced.
So people need to look at their own municipalities and state government, and see who needs to be replaced state-by-state. Look at the states who voted for him, Who’s in position in those states to take those seats back, so that we can get some modicum of control. Right now, he is in complete control of the government because he has the majority of both houses.”
ALL POLITICS IS LOCAL
“I am an elected official, but I’m going to tell you that we can’t solve this problem alone,” said Assemblywoman Zinerman. “We need our community-based institutions, and that’s everybody fighting for the family, to our healthcare apparatus, to our schools, to the organizations that we actually fund to do this justice work.
Everybody’s got to be clear about what the agenda is and ignore the fact that he is getting rid of DEI and all the other things because they’re gone. We survived without them before. We didn’t necessarily need somebody in Human Resources telling us that they should follow the law. The law exists. You can’t discriminate, but it still happens despite those programs.
So what do we now tell those CEOs and those government agencies that are getting rid of those programs? What are they going to do with that money? We need to demand that they ensure that folk can still be educated that look like us, have the protection that the law gives us to go ask everybody from worst landlords, [to challenge] the banks that won’t lend people money so that they can fix their homes, or they can fix their business so they can continue to thrive. That’s the work ahead.”
The Trump-effect trauma is real but not debilitating.
“I won’t tell people to get over it. They need to harness the feeling, whether it is fear, disgust, or outrage– harness that into a positive movement forward. They need to identify the thing that they feel most passionate about and use that trauma to push past this.
The problem now is people are too comfortable. They’ve lost their fight and their sense of survival. Sometimes you gotta be put in a position that’s going to stomp you out of your inertia and propel you forward–and I think this is the task.”
Political pundits and regular activists cite that Trump’s policies are upending basic needs and resources of the nation.
For example, the Bed Stuy/Crown Heights elected told Our Time Press, “People think that food is expensive now, let him go forth with mass deportations. We are the nation’s food basket. The truth be told, Black folks were replaced by immigrants, and they do that work right now.”
She added, though, “Will our district be fine? Yes, because we have 15 schools growing food hydroponically. We live in a borough where we’ve got 26 community farms and gardens. Our investments, my investments over the last four years in offices, have been in those spaces, and so whether it is a man-made disaster like the one in the White House or a natural disaster, we need to be self-sufficient in the way that we know how to be.”
The Assemblywoman said that every fourth Saturday at Bed Stuy’s Restoration Plaza, she hosts a Community Action Network meeting where people can get information “to combat what is going on right now. If we do not have a list of things that we are charged to do in this moment, then we are part of the problem. We need discipline. We’ve been in places like this before. We’ve got to [move away] from places that are supporting policies that don’t support our community.”
New State Leadership
-Speaker: Carl E. Heastie
-Majority Whip:
Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn
-Majority Leader:
Crystal D. Peoples-Stokes
-Deputy Majority Whip:
Stefani Zinerman
-Standing Committee, Election Law
Chair, Latrice M. Walker
-Task Force and Legislative Divisions
Chair, New Americans
Phara Souffrant Forrest