Community News
Our Agenda 2025: Community Response to Project 2025
By Mary Alice Miller
Did the Heritage Foundation think communities across the country would lay down and accept its Project 2025 fascist agenda? Naw, son. When pushed, the community pushes back. Hard.
One of the community responses to Project 2025 is Our Agenda 2025, an initiative that has emerged from the 56th Assembly District under the leadership of Assemblywoman Stefani Zinerman. Our Agenda 2025 has had monthly community meetings since mainstream awareness of Project 2025 grew. The meetings started with exposing the harms embedded within Project 2025 and have moved to developing a community-based agenda.
A recent Our Agenda 2025 meeting occurred at Restoration and featured presenters discussing public safety, food, healthcare, and education.
Jahi Rose, Director of Outreach at the NYC Civilian Complaint Review Board, said public education is effective in letting people know that they can file complaints against certain police regarding their behaviors in the community. “As complaints cycle through, individual officers realize there is accountability for their actions. We should then start to see a decrease in actual complaints,” said Rose, “not because people are unaware, but because there has been a habitual change in officers’ behavior.”
Rose said, “Change in legislation is needed to find true accountability for officers.”
He explained the process: “After CCRB receives a complaint, that complaint gets investigated, our board votes on it, and then the police commissioner is the person who says if the officer gets disciplined or not, the officer was right or wrong. If that sounds like genuine accountability to you, then we can leave it as it is. But if that doesn’t, that component must be changed.”
Rose noted that the CCRB produces a monthly report that shows the number of complaints coming through the system at a specific precinct, the outcomes of the cases investigated, and the different types of complaints coming in.
Rae, Cultivating Justice, said that the danger of Project 2025 is attacks on institutions that people have gotten used to, such as Social Security, SNAP, and WIC. Rae said the solution is to mainstream those types of government supports because “these are things that keep people from completely going into poverty.”
Rae said institutional purchasing or local food procurement to anchor institutions in the community – schools, hospitals, senior centers – should create access to healthy, accessible, affordable food for everyone in the community.
She said an end run around “corporations that are gaming our food systems” is by becoming “value chain coordinators, understanding how to order food from farmers and how to create a value-added product like jams or tomato sauces.”
Dr. Torian Easterling, One Brooklyn Health Senior Vice President of Population & Community Health/Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer, said the risk of an adverse outcome of the November election is a possible successful attack against the Affordable Care Act, under which about 90% of citizens have health insurance.
“Health insurance and Medicaid will be impacted by November if the outcome we don’t want happens. They tried during the former Trump administration, and they will be diligent about repealing the Affordable Care Act,” said Dr. Easterling. “We need to be worried about this. We need to be concerned. We have to make sure that the community continues to be protected.”
Regarding abortion, Dr. Easterling said, “If the outcome we don’t want happens, we are going to see more states like New York State continue to provide access to abortion whether we are talking about procedures or medication. We will see greater restrictions on individuals coming into our state to receive those services and restrictions on providers and organizations that provide those services.”
Dr. Easterling said all health care institutions under the Affordable Care Act must submit and post an online community assessment every three years, or they will be subject to a federal tax. The report identifies community priorities and needs for the institution’s catchment area.
“That would absolutely go away and there would be less responsibility for institutions to do the work that they need to do to make sure that they are taking care of the community outside of the four walls,” said Dr. Easterling. “What is the social responsibility of institutions? It is not only providing services for our community for folk coming in, but they are also adding value for the 1.5 million people who live in East and Central Brooklyn.”
Dr. Easterling pointed to ongoing fights to address Medicaid reimbursement rates, price transparency around healthcare services, and medical debt. “We are not the highest consumers of health care services, but we still have some of the highest medical debt in the country – mainly Black and brown folks,” he said.
Assemblywoman Stefani Zinerman brought up another point. “When we think about a small business obtaining a contract with a health care system, a nursing home or a school system, we have a state law that says 30% of all contracts must go to women or minority enterprise,” said Zinerman. “60% of all MWBE contracts go to white women. The closest group is Asians at 5.7%, 4.7% African American, and Hispanics at approximately 2%. One of the goals in this community is for our dollars to circulate more than 24 hours. If we have an opportunity to get these contracts then our wealth will grow and strengthen our sovereignty.”
Michelle Patterson, Lead Advisor on Disproportionality, NYC Public Schools, said Our Agenda 2025 should include increases in school safety, the hiring of Black leadership and educators, and opportunities for STEAM education, with a concentrated effort for family and community engagement.
Patterson touted the implementation of the Black Studies curriculum in NYC from K-12, noting that the effort was driven from outside the schools.
Michelle Taejae, representing NOBLE and speaking on behalf of the NYPD Guardians, expressed concern about Project 2025’s impact on public safety, including schools, transportation, courts, corrections, and state police.
“Project 2025 is in effect already,” said Taejae. “And so we have to be ready and make sure it is Our Agenda 2025. The best way to do that is to be informed and engaged. We want to make sure that law enforcement and the community are symbiotic. We have to work together. We live in our communities,” adding, “Funding is going to be impacted, not from the position of defunding the police but resources that police use to serve the community.
Our Agenda 2025 plans to continue community advocacy no matter the outcome of the November General Election.