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Did Bernie Sanders Give NYCHA Residents Enough Notice Of His Huge Queens Rally?
By
Emma Whitford
Published Oct 23, 2019
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David "Dee" Delgado / Gothamist
By
Emma Whitford
Published Oct 23, 2019
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On Friday, one day before Senator Bernie Sanders arrived in Queensbridge Park in Long Island City for a massive rally with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, his 2020 presidential campaign said they distributed flyers across the street outside of the Queensbridge Houses, the country’s largest public housing complex with more than 6,000 residents.
That was the extent of the flyering, the Sanders campaign said Tuesday, after reports began to surface that some Queensbridge residents found the outreach to be inadequate.
Friday evening, Queensbridge Houses Tenant Association President April Simpson received a phone call from Sanders’ national political director, Analilia Mejia. By that point, she already had her monthly tenant association meeting scheduled for the following day.
“I was a little, I wouldn't say the word ‘upset,’ I was just a little discouraged because I found out the day before,” Simpson told Gothamist.
“My concern is that they always talk about public housing,” Simpson added. “The largest housing development in the United States of America. He was in our backyard and you didn't include the community. There was no flyers posted informing the community, and it should have been done a couple of days before.”
Simpson added, “I like Mr. Sanders. I've never met him. As far as my voting capacity he's just not the one for me. However, he knows about public housing.”
Bishop Mitchell Taylor, another community leader who lives near Queensbridge Park, said he did not receive any notice about the rally either. “If you're going to come to someone's backyard you should at least invite the people who live in the yard, instead of using their yard as a prop,” he said. (Simpson and Taylor were both vocal supporters of Amazon’s failed proposal to build a headquarters in Long Island City, a move that Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez opposed.)
Addressing the crowd of 26,000 on Saturday, both Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez appealed to the plight of public housing residents. “Let’s acknowledge the ground that we are on, which is the ground zero for the fight for public housing, and fully funded, dignified housing in the United States of America,” Ocaso-Cortez said.
Sitting in the audience, 64-year-old Queensbridge resident Patricia Peterson said she came to the rally out of curiosity after hearing about it on the news that morning. A Hillary Clinton voter in 2016, she opposed the Amazon plan, and was curious to hear Sanders’ position on affordable housing. “There was nothing put out about this today,” she said.
Other Queensbridge residents say they did have notice. Ray Normandeau, who runs the Queensbridge-focused website Normandeau Newswire, told Gothamist that he attended the rally, and posted information on his site roughly a week ahead of time. He estimated that a few hundred of his neighbors attended.
"It was on the Queensbridge website for a full week with big graphics," Normandeau told Gothamist. "I can't see how people could say they don't know about it. It has been said there were no flyers. There was a tenant association meeting on Saturday as well. There were no flyers about that."
Supporters already in Sanders’ campaign database received text messages about the Long Island City rally with a week’s notice, on October 12th.
The Sanders campaign did not provide Gothamist with a statement. A spokesperson said that community organizers and residents did attend the rally and got to meet the senator, but declined to provide a list, citing privacy concerns.
At least some of those residents came with the nonprofit CAAAV Organizing Asian Communities, which works with Chinese, Bangladeshi and Korean Queensbridge residents. Sasha Wijeyeratne, CAAAV’s executive director, said she received an invitation to the rally on Friday from the Sanders Campaign, with the instruction that she could bring “about eight people.” She ended up bringing seniors from Queensbridge, and was grateful that the campaign helped everyone find a chair.
“We got about a day’s notice and we really think that public housing should be one of the issues at the center of this upcoming race and this is why we hustled to get members to the rally that was happening in their backyard,” she said.
The Ocasio-Cortez campaign did not conduct its own outreach at the Queensbridge Houses in the leadup to the Sanders rally, her campaign confirmed. They did blast a notice out to their New York City email list. (The Queensbridge Houses are in Rep. Carolyn Maloney’s district.)
One of the recipients was Sylvia White, 70, chairperson of the Justice for All Coalition which organizes NYCHA residents in Queens. White is a resident of the Astoria Houses, and an Ocasio-Cortez ally. Her group was vocally opposed to the ill-fated plan for an Amazon headquarters in Queens.
When White saw the email about the rally, “I printed it out on my computer and put it up in the building,” she said. “I only did five. I gave one to my church, and some of the community people I ran into.”
An undecided voter, White ended up taking the bus to the rally. “There was media coverage, it was all over the TV,” she added. “I noticed when I started getting ready to leave the area there were people sitting in their windows listening to what was going on. It was their choice as to whether they wanted to participate in that rally.”
Ocasio-Cortez spokesman Corbin Trent provided Gothamist with a statement acknowledging shortcomings in the planning process.
“We're proud of the work the Sanders campaign did to put together such an exciting and impressive rally. We're proud of the efforts to reach out to the community, including Queensbridge,” he said. “We understand there's always room to do more, and do better. And building connections with the community is absolutely a focus of our campaign and is a long-term effort.”
State Senator Julia Salazar, a Sanders supporter who was introduced on stage at the rally on Saturday, tweeted on Wednesday that while outreach to such a large complex is “easier said than done,” campaigns “should always strive to do better. Ideally, plan a big rally more than 4 days in advance and do rigorous door-to-door outreach to residents.”
Tagged
bernie sanders
2020 election
alexandria ocasio-cortez
queensbridge houses
Emma Whitford
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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