POLITICS
Goal in Sight, Tiffany Cabán Pushes to the Finish Line
Queens Council hopeful looks to erase 2019 DA loss in June primary
BY MATT TRACY
Tiffany Cabán’s heartbreaking
defeat in the
2019 Democratic primary
for Queens district
attorney marked a setback for
intersectional queer representation
in local government. The grassroots
campaign reached its apex
on election night when it appeared
as if Cabán pulled off a major victory,
but it dipped to devastating
lows by the time all the votes were
counted.
Even after Cabán narrowly lost
to Melinda Katz, who went on to
win the general election and became
the borough’s top prosecutor,
it seemed like a matter of when, not
if, Cabán would run for something
else at some point.
She knew she lit a spark in the
city, let alone Queens — a spark
that refl ected the hunger for change
in the criminal justice system in a
borough where, like in many other
places, trans women, people of color,
and queer folks in general have
long been subjected to discriminatory
policing and mistreatment.
Cabán drew national attention
in the process, attracting endorsements
from US Senators Bernie
Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth
Warren of Massachusetts, as well
as Congressmember Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez of the Bronx and
Queens. And evidence of Cabán’s
massive support in the queer
community was on full display at
Queens Pride in 2019 when many
attendees were donning Cabán
T-shirts and her campaign fl yers
were plastered on nearby storefronts.
Following the election, Cabán
eventually settled into a role with
the Working Families Party, and
late last summer, she jumped back
onto the campaign trail when she
offi cially kicked off her campaign
for City Council in the 22nd District,
which encompasses Astoria,
East Elmhurst, Jackson Heights,
and Woodside, as well as Rikers
Island.
“I’m going to be real. It took a
minute,” Cabán said during an interview
Out queer City Council candidate Tiffany Cabán at Queens Pride during her 2019 bid for district attorney.
with Gay City News. “After
my race, a lot of folks asked me,
‘what are you running for next?’”
Cabán, a former public defender,
said the convergence of the coronavirus
crisis and last summer’s
mass protest movement and budget
fi ght helped fuel her desire to
jump in the race. But those were
not the only factors infl uencing her
decision. Her work as an attorney
brought her to witness the sobering
injustices facing New Yorkers in
the criminal justice system: As an
example, she represented a trans
woman who could not afford bail
and was thrown into a jail with
men. She started to grow facial
hair after authorities withheld her
hormones, representing a striking
display of medical mistreatment.
Inhumane conditions that
Cabán saw fi rst-hand became part
of the motivation behind her City
Council campaign’s lengthy public
safety plan that seeks to shift resources
from the NYPD into areas
of need in communities. It includes
calls for non-police traffi c safety,
violence prevention services, community
mediation centers — where
multiple city agencies would work
to help mediate disputes — as
well as trained crisis intervention
teams that could respond to domestic,
sexual, community-based,
or youth violence confl icts.
That plan, she said, is based
on her lived experience as a queer
DONNA ACETO
Latina woman from a working
class family, her work as a public
defender, and her organizing efforts
in local communities.
“It is a true labor of love,” she
said. “We’re out here demanding
that we divest from policing and
invest in our communities.”
Part of that plan includes strong
support for comprehensive sex
work decriminalization — a key
LGBTQ issue in New York City —
and shifting the government’s focus
from criminalizing sex workers
to supporting them, including
those who are working by choice,
circumstance, or coercion. Under
her plan, sex workers who are experiencing
abuse or are victims
of traffi cking could be referred to
“Family Support” services that
could provide trauma, housing,
and healthcare assistance.
“We have to create an environment
where sex work is destigmatized,”
she said.
When asked about Layleen
Xtravaganza Cubilette-Polanco,
an Afro-Latinx trans woman who
died at Rikers Island after she was
neglected by jail authorities during
a health emergency, and Kawaski
Trawick, a queer Black man who
was shot and killed by police at his
home in the Bronx, Cabán opted
to focus specifi cally on Polanco —
who was in jail because she could
not afford $500 bail. Polanco’s
tragic death drew attention from
across the city, but it hit even closer
to home for Cabán since Rikers
falls within her own district.
“The system failed Polanco well
before she even crossed the criminal
legal system,” Cabán said as
she emphasized the need to “talk
about folks who have died on Rikers
or while incarcerated.”
In addition to community safety
plans, Cabán’s campaign is also
placing a focus on a “Green New
Deal for NYC,” which she insists
would create at least 100,000 green
jobs and bring about a “care-based
economy” heavy on investing in infrastructure
and addressing systemic
environmental racism in the
city.
Throughout the campaign,
Cabán said she has formulated
her platform in part by listening to
community-based feedback from
the district, which was previously
represented by Costa Constantinides
until his resignation last
month. She has a feedback form on
her campaign site, hosts Instagram
Live sessions to answer questions
from the community, and once
held a bike ride event that culminated
in an “input session.”
“It is so important that we are
listening to the people in our community,”
she said. “We’re going to
work together on things even if
we don’t agree on 100 percent of
things. I will fi ght with you and for
you.”
Now 34 years old and in the
midst of her second campaign,
Cabán acknowledges she did not
know “my ass from my elbow” when
she fi rst conceived the idea to run
for offi ce the fi rst time around. She
learned a great deal about electoral
politics, which laid the groundwork
for what would eventually be a run
for City Council. During her 2019
campaign she told the Jim Owles
Liberal Democratic Club that she
said her offi ce would support “the
legalization” of sex work — a position
she has since adjusted to
refl ect the understanding among
advocates that decriminalization,
not legalization, is the best path
➤ DISTRICT 22, continued on p.15
MAY 6 - MAY 19, 2 14 021 | GayCityNews.com
/GayCityNews.com
