Bronx state senators address their constituents on Thursday, Sep. 12.
THE BRONX, New York—Vivian Young has lived in the Bronx her entire life, but now, at 65, she’s worried about what it would take to remain living there.
“I love it here,” Young said at a town hall at Monroe College in University Heights last Thursday night.
She said affordable housing for seniors is getting harder to come by.
Over 40 borough residents attended the town hall hosted by Bronx state senators. They expressed concern over health, housing and criminal justice.
Young is also concerned about public health, noting that the Bronx has high diabetes rates.
In the borough, 16% of adults have diabetes, according to New York City Health Department data. Only 11% of adults in the city as a whole have the disease. The department notes that around 164,000 adults have not been diagnosed.
Steven Pacheco, 29, a student at CUNY’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice, wanted to hear about how lawmakers were prepared to handle marijuana convictions, rehabilitation into society, and market access, concerns rooted in racial inequality.
“The culture is rich, the people are beautiful,” Mr. Pacheco said of the Bronx. “[But] it’s the last borough in everything.”
Over forty residents appeared to express their concerns.
Sen. Luis Sepúlveda spoke on the legal system and its treatment of people of color. As the chair of the Crime and Corrections Committee, he said he had visited 13 facilities, which had conditions he described as “an abomination.”
Five state senators from the Bronx listened to residents’ concerns, but they also publicized their own accomplishments during the recent legislative session.
Sen. Gustavo Rivera said he was proud of legislation that “codified the ACA in law.”
As lawmakers touted accomplishments throughout their speeches, attendees applauded.
To get something done in the legislature, said Sen. Jamaal Bailey, “you have to go through the Bronx.” He is the Chairman of the Codes Committee. Each of the legislators at the town hall chair a committee.
In the 2018 Midterm elections, Democrats picked up eight seats in the New York Senate, gaining control of both branches of the legislature and ending the divided government. This allowed them to pass 248 laws, according to official counts.
While just over 40 people showed up, in addition, one in five were staffers for legislators or Monroe College. The moderator opened the panel over a half hour late.
Freshman Sen. Alessandra Biaggi, occasionally sipping from a jar of kombucha, explained how she reestablished the Ethics Committee after years of hiatus. She also held sexual assault hearings.
After the event, Ms. Young expressed disappointment that Sen. Serrano was late due to parent conferences at school.
“I think he could have just stayed home,” she said.
However, she was encouraged that by Sen. Rivera’s efforts at health care legislation.
According to Sen. Rivera, there’s more to do. “[We’re] just getting the training wheels off.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez faced criticism following news that she was blocking some users from her personal Twitter account. In defense, Ocasio-Cortez said that the few accounts that she has blocked are those that subjected her to online harassment.
A violent ad paid for by New Faces GOP, a new right-wing political action committee, aired during the Democratic debate on Sept. 12, showing a photo of Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s face burning, followed by images of human remains.
Former California GOP congressional candidate Elizabeth Heng delivered the ad’s message: “This is the face of socialism and ignorance,” said Heng, as Ocasio-Cortez’s face burst into flames on screen and melted into images from the 1970s Cambodian genocide, which Heng’s parents survived.
The cost of the ad to the conservative PAC was close to $100,000, according to Federal Communications Commission financial documents.
Heng, who was defeated by incumbent Congressman Jim Costa, used much of the same imagery in the controversial ad as she did in a video for her congressional campaign in 2018, which became the center of a first amendment squabble after it was flagged by Facebook as inappropriate content and removed from the site, resulting in Republican outrage.
“My
parents did not have the luxury of blocking the horrific content from the
reality of their lives,” wrote Heng in a tweeted response in August 2018. “Why
does Facebook feel they have the right to censor that content in the land of
free speech?”
We have a choice: Will we let socialists like @AOC be the face of our future? Or will a new generation of conservatives step up & lead us? We’re launching New Faces GOP to help identify & support the next generation of GOP leaders. Learn more: https://t.co/UrarCUSAIlpic.twitter.com/LgwTrS8En6
While Heng’s ads continue to spark controversy, this time the outrage rests largely on the other side of the political divide.
“Republicans are running TV ads setting pictures of me on fire,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter after the ad first aired on ABC following the Democratic debate.
The 29-year-old from the Bronx gained national attention after unexpectedly defeating longtime congressman Joe Crowley in a democratic primary in 2018 and has been a target of hostility from conservatives since she took office. This time, she said that Republicans are profiting from using her face to spread hate. That isn’t without consequence, she said.
“Who
pays for heightened security? Who answers the phones for the threats resulting
from a violent, false ad?” she wrote.
Regardless of the ad’s violent nature, Ocasio-Cortez has no clear legal recourse to demand its removal. The conservative PAC’s right to produce and distribute the content is protected under the first amendment, and the U.S. Supreme Court has consistently ruled that hate speech is no exception when it comes to speech protections.
Personal attacks are nothing new for the congresswoman. Although people are free to say what they want about her, in cases in which she is subject to extreme forms of online abuse, she said she believes she can choose not to listen.
Her
solution? The block button.
GOP’s message: No policy, no facts, just displays of violence + corporations like @ABCNetwork & Sinclair who amplify them.
They profit from burning my likeness on TV. But who pays for heightened security? Who answers the phones for the threats resulting from a violent, false ad? https://t.co/Gr1XhEbwDC
In August, a letter sent by Knight First Amendment Institute, a free speech protection organization at Columbia University, called the practice “unconstitutional.” Ocasio-Cortez responded, and said that she has only blocked 20 of her 5.3 million followers from her @AOC account.
Among the accounts blocked by the congresswoman is the Daily Caller, a conservative online news organization that shared a fake nude photo of her in January 2019. “Here’s the photo some people described as a nude selfie of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,” read the tweet, which has since been deleted.
Ocasio-Cortez’s
office did not respond to a request for a list of additional blocked accounts
or specific examples of the behavior she is blocking.
1. I have 5.2 million followers. Less than 20 accounts are blocked for ongoing harassment. 0 are my constituents.
2. Harassment is not a viewpoint. Some accounts, like the Daily Caller, posted fake nude photos of me & abused my comments to spread it. No one is entitled to abuse. https://t.co/0QWKqJFzRe
Katie
Fallow, a First Amendment lawyer with Knight First Amendment whose name
appeared on the letter chastising Ocasio-Cortez for banning certain voices from
her Twitter account said that in cases where a “true threat” is made, the rules
change a bit, but didn’t provide a clear definition of what a true threat
entailed.
“The U.S.
Supreme Court has over and over again upheld that public officials must
withstand pretty withering and caustic criticism, not just about their policies
but about their character,” said Fallow. “The theory is that it’s better to do
that than to allow public officials to block speech based on viewpoint and
determine when they think something is inappropriate or not.”
But Ocasio-Cortez issued a defiant
response to the letter while at a Town Hall held in New York City Housing
Authority Boston Post Road Plaza in the Bronx in late August.
“Free speech isn’t an entitlement to
force someone to endure your harassment,” Ocasio-Cortez told a crowd of reporters
after the meeting.
Currently, two other newly elected young, female representatives from the Bronx have joined Ocasio-Cortez and said that online harassment is a problem and should not be tolerated.
At a town hall that was held tonight in the Bronx, I asked @AOC about the letter regarding First Amendment protections, and if she perceived it to have any implication on the fight to end sexual harassment. Here’s what she said: pic.twitter.com/KgvGjzVHgp
Alessandra Biaggi, a 33-year-old newly-elected New York state senator whose district overlaps with Ocasio-Cortez’s, said she believes the law on free speech is still adjusting to having women in power in the era of social media.
She, along with Ocasio-Cortez and New York Assemblywoman Nathalia Fernandez of the Bronx represent a growing number of young women and women of color running for and winning positions in public office at the city, state, and national level.
“This is not a knock on men, it’s just that so much about leadership has been defined by this male lens,” said Biaggi, who ousted 14-year incumbent Jeffrey Klein in the 2018 state senate election. “We have to work harder to define what it means to be a leader.”
Biaggi said she has experienced
various degrees of gender related harassment since taking office, which has
ranged from minor instances, like men using her physical appearance to belittle
her position—calling her things like “cute” and “small”
in business settings— to more
extreme instances of threat and exploitation, such as threatening physical harm.
“I will listen to someone who disagrees with
me, who’s angry at me for something,” said Biaggi. “But I don’t need to listen
to someone calling me nasty degrading names or harassing me. Online is the
perfect environment for that really outrageous behavior.”
Biaggi’s office did not respond to a request
for further specification of the type of behavior that she believes crosses the
line.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is escorted out of a Town Hall in the Bronx on Aug. 29, as a man in attendance shouts that she’s a fraud.
Regardless, data makes clear that there are major gender-based differences in the experiences of members of public office, especially those engaged in online arenas.
Monica Anderson, a senior researcher
at Pew Research Center, a non-partisan organization, said that 70 percent of women in the US see online harassment as a major
problem.
“That’s
compared to only about half of men,” Anderson said.
Most notably, Pew research found that women experience much higher rates of sexual harassment, including receiving unsolicited pornographic images and having nude images of them shared without permission. Women between the ages of 18 and 29 reported being sexually harassed at rates that more than doubled their male counterparts.
Rep. Ocasio-Cortez signs a magazine cover she’s featured on for a constituent in attendance following a housing Town Hall in the Bronx on Aug. 29.
Assemblywoman
Fernandez, a former staff member in the same office she now serves as an
elected official, said she hasn’t had to block anybody, yet, but she’s seen the
differences in how men and women in office are treated online, first-hand.
“I take this experience from having had to manage a social media account for a male elected official,” said Fernandez, who added that followers have messaged her professional account to make a pass at her, called her beautiful and ask her personal questions about what she’s doing and where she’s at. “Now, seeing my own account, I do see different messages come in.”
When asked whether or not she thought Trump blocking somebody on Twitter (he received a letter from the Knight Foundation in 2017 and recently lost a lawsuit raised by Knight First Amendment) was the same as AOC blocking somebody on Twitter, Fernandez said, “absolutely not.”
