POLITICS
Gay District Leader Takes on State Senate Veteran
Josue Pierre once saw politics as closed to him; now his eyes are on the prize
BY MATT TRACY
When he came out as
gay at age 21, Josue
“Josh” Pierre recalls
that he endured a
period of depression and met with
a psychologist who asked him what
troubled him the most about coming
to terms with his sexuality.
“That question forced me to
think deeper into it,” Pierre, who is
currently the male district leader in
Brooklyn’s 42nd Assembly District,
said during a recent interview with
Gay City News. “I thought about
how hard I had to work growing
up to get to that point. I told him,
‘Because of this, I will never be a
partner at this fi rm and I will never
be a US senator.’ Those were my
aspirations and goals in life.”
Now 37 and proudly out for well
over a decade, Pierre isn’t yet vying
for the US Senate, but he is running
for State Senate. The Flatbush
Democrat is mounting a primary
challenge against longtime
incumbent Kevin Parker in the
21st Senate District, which encompasses
portions of East Flatbush,
Flatbush, Midwood, Ditmas Park,
Kensington, Park Slope, and Windsor
Terrace. The primary election
is slated for June 23 of next year.
Pierre, who has lived in Flatbush
since moving to the US from Haiti
as a young child, would make history
by becoming the state’s fi rst
out gay black state senator and
the fi rst out black lawmaker in the
history of his home borough. As
it stands, the State Legislature is
rather short on LGBTQ representation:
Brad Hoylman of Manhattan
is the lone out gay member of the
Senate and Manhattan’s Deborah
Glick and Daniel O’Donnell and
Rochester’s Harry Bronson are
the only three out LGBTQ assemblymembers.
They are all white.
Pierre is running to address issues
like housing, education, and
transportation, but he especially
drilled down on the importance of
housing reform throughout the interview.
The affordability crisis, he
said, is one he has grown to understand
more intimately through his
Brooklyn State Senate hopeful Josue Pierre (left), with his longtime partner Corey Weaver during Pride Month in 2016.
work volunteering for campaigns
and engaging with constituents
since he was fi rst elected as district
leader in 2016.
Housing woes are directly linked
to other issues, Pierre said, in ways
that bolstered his decision to take
on an entrenched political fi gure
who has risen to become majority
whip in the upper chamber.
Pierre is joining the growing fi eld
of progressive candidates vowing
to reject money from big-money
interests and corporate PACs because
he wants to keep his focus
on constituents.
When asked why he’s taking on
Parker, Pierre said, “If you’re getting
a lot of money from real estate
groups or energy interests that
don’t want to see green energy, or
from groups that don’t want to see
a certain level of affordable housing
protection for working class
people like the people who live in
Flatbush and East Flatbush, then
it becomes harder to do your job.”
He continued, “I also believe that
a lot of people go into politics with
good intentions and have a lot of
energy, but not everybody is Bernie
Sanders, not everybody continues
with that strong energy, and over
time they become part of a system
that prevents progress instead of
pushing for it.”
Although Pierre, unlike his opponent,
does not have 16 years in
offi ce under his belt, he is embarking
on his campaign armed with
a well-rounded political résumé.
He has served on the Democratic
County Committee, chaired his local
community board’s Land Use
Committee, and worked as the
Brooklyn borough director for City
Comptroller Scott Stringer, among
other key posts throughout the
last decade.
He is also involved in several
LGBTQ political clubs: He’s on the
board of Brooklyn’s Lambda Independent
Democrats — “that’s my
home LGBT club,” he said — and
is a member of Jim Owles Liberal
Democratic Club and the Stonewall
Democratic Club of New York
City. He also sits on the board of
the Stonewall Community Development
Corporation, a non-profi t
that works to improve housing opportunities
for LGBTQ seniors in
the city.
“The housing crisis affects everybody
— more disproportionately
people of color and working
class people — but I’ve met enough
LGBTQ seniors to tell you it’s hitting
the community pretty hard,”
he said. “So I’ve given my time and
GAY CITY NEWS FILE PHOTO
money to Stonewall Community
Development Corporation, I’ve
helped to recruit other board members,
and I’ve voiced my concerns
around policy and where I think
the organization should be.”
Pierre’s presence in the State
Senate would provide representation
on issues that are unfairly affecting
queer people of color. He is
supporting the work of DecrimNY,
which is the coalition geared toward
decriminalizing sex work,
and he said it is “super important”
to stand behind that movement.
“It’s very similar to the decriminalization
of marijuana,” he said.
“What we do have now is a system
that disproportionately punishes
one segment of the population.
With decriminalization of sex
work, the end result is that we’re
not punishing the people who are
in that workforce. They’re the ones
really bearing the brunt of it.”
He also voiced conditional support
for passing the controversial
bill to legalize gestational surrogacy,
which passed the State Senate
this year but stalled in the lower
chamber amid concerns raised
by Glick and other female assemblymembers
about the rights of
➤ JOSUE PIERRE, continued on p.9
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