COURIER L 20 IFE, JANUARY 8-14, 2021
Brooklyn Dems
abolish gender
requirements
BY KEVIN DUGGAN
Brooklyn Democratic leaders
passed a new law allowing transgender
and gender nonbinary people to
run for the borough party’s lowest
rung of elected offi ce.
The party’s 42-member Executive
Committee unanimously passed a proposal
at a Dec. 30 meeting to remove
old gender requirements from county
committee seats, which previously
had to be evenly split among male and
female members — effectively excluding
politicos that don’t identify on the
gender binary.
“This is an exciting time for Brooklyn
Democrats, once again leading the
nation in embracing inclusion and diversity,”
party boss and Flatbush Assemblywoman
Rodneyse Bichotte told
Brooklyn Paper. “The Executive Committee’s
unanimous approval was not
only the right decision, it is the only
acceptable decision.”
The rule change eliminated the
quota that evenly splits the two-tofour
seats of the party’s rank-and-fi le
membership in each so-called election
district — which cover just a few city
blocks — between men and women.
The same system exists for State
Committee members — or District
Leaders as they’re dubbed in Brooklyn
where they make up most of the Executive
Committee — and one pol who ran
for that offi ce on the female line this
year but later came out as nonbinary
said the move will open the doors for
more people to join the party in the
next election cycle in 2022.
“It feels very freeing. I think wanting
to participate on these very local
levels you want to try and remove as
many roadblocks as possible,” said
Boerum Hill District Leader Jesse
Pierce. “Classifying males and females
felt like a weird complication as part of
county committee organizing.”
The former regulations were based
off of a 1938 State Constitution amendment,
which originally intended to encourage
more women to participate in
politics, but the statute forced Brooklynites
who don’t identify along the
gender binary to tick a box as either
a “male” or “female” candidate to run
for the hyper-local offi ce.
Half a dozen prospective Dems
sued the party in April to allow gender
nonbinary people to run, but a Kings
County Supreme Court judge tossed
out that lawsuit on technicalities. Yet
the move prompted Bichotte to convene
the so-called Task Force on Gender
Discrimination and Representation
Brooklyn Democratic Party boss Rodneyse
Bichotte said the abolishment of gender
requirements in the County Committee has
been an “educational” experience.
File photo by Paul Frangipane
in August to address the outdated
rules.
The task force met 10 times during
the coming four months to discuss
and hear from experts and academics
on how best to address the gendered
clause.
The Executive Committee created
84 temporary gender-neutral seats at a
Nov. 29 meeting, but attached an illegal
amendment empowering themselves
to fi ll some 2,000 County Committee
vacancies, which progressive politicos
denounced as a “pink-washed” powergrab.
A Kings County Supreme Court
Judge voided those vacancy appointments
on Dec. 10 because the move violated
state Election Law which only
permits the full body of the party to
elect its fellow rank-and-fi le membership
at its annual organizational meeting.
At a Dec. 20 meeting, the party’s
task force eventually unanimously
voted to recommend its proposal for
the party to do away with gender designations
entirely for the borough’s
roughly 5,400 county committee seats.
The party boss said that the task
force meetings were an “educational
experience,” which she hoped it would
be for the borough at large as well.
“It was a very educational experience
for me, and I hope that it can be
an educational experience for all of
Brooklyn,” Bichotte said.
Additional reporting by Meaghan
McGoldrick