POLITICS
Jumaane, In Re-Elect Bid, Addresses LGBTQ Issues
Public advocate links issues facing marginalized queer communities to broader concerns
BY MATT TRACY
On a Friday afternoon
just weeks before the
general election for New
York City public advocate,
incumbent Jumaane Williams
put on his “Resist” and “Stay
Woke” pins, sat back into his tiny
campaign offi ce near City Hall,
and addressed the elephant in the
room.
“People are confused,” he said.
“People don’t even know there’s a
race.”
It was just eight months ago
when Williams weathered a crowded
and contentious nonpartisan
special election race to fi ll the public
advocate vacancy left by Letitia
James’ election as state attorney
general. Yet, thanks to quirky election
laws, he has to run for the seat
all over again on November 5. Williams
faces Staten Island Republican
Councilmember Joe Borelli,
whose record on LGBTQ issues is
dismal .
There is very little attention,
however, on a race that many people
thought was settled earlier this
year.
“We take nothing for granted, so
we want to make sure we come in
strong,” Williams said.
Williams’ role as public advocate
— a post that is fi rst in line
should a mayoral vacancy occur —
is unique in comparison to his old
job in the City Council, where he
spent nine years representing the
people of Flatbush, East Flatbush,
Midwood, Marine Park, Flatlands,
and Kensington. Known for his
fi ery activism on a variety of issues,
he was viewed by many as a
natural fi t for a position titled public
advocate. His new job, he said,
has provided him with the necessary
visibility to elevate important
causes.
That amplifi cation is necessary
for underserved local communities
that need an offi cial willing to bring
their priorities to public light. In an
interview with Gay City News, Williams
highlighted LGBTQ issues
and discussed how the challenges
Public advocate Jumaane Williams at his campaign offi ce near City Hall.
before the queer community relate
to broader hurdles facing all New
Yorkers.
Williams consistently stresses
the need to hold city law enforcement
offi cers accountable for their
actions — in a year when Kawaski
Trawick, a gay black man, was fatally
shot by police offi cers in his
own home in the Bronx and Layleen
Xtravaganza Cubilette-Polanco,
a transgender woman, died
in her cell at Rikers Island due to
health issues that the city knew
about when she was locked up in
“restrictive housing.”
Williams was one of the few people
to have viewed the body camera
footage of the fatal interaction
between Trawick and police offi -
cers. The NYPD told Gay City News
in April that Trawick fi rst called
police to say his apartment was
on fi re, and shortly after that his
neighbors also called police. Offi
cers arrived to fi nd him holding
a kitchen knife and a broomstick.
Police claimed they tased him before
he recovered and charged
them with a knife, forcing them to
shoot him.
Williams believes that interaction
was a prime example of why
police need to be better equipped to
MATT TRACY
handle such cases.
“I don’t believe our offi cers are
trained for fi rst instinct,” he said.
“In the video, it was quite clear
that they had every opportunity
to come out of that house and instead
they stayed in. There was a
knife in his kitchen — I don’t know
where else you would have a knife
than in a kitchen. The police just
opened the door. Think about how
you would feel if somebody opened
the door.”
Then acknowledging that he
“can’t contemplate what implicit
bias does” and that “we all have
them,” Williams suggested that
better training for police offi cers’
immediate response instincts
“might save your life. We have to
talk about it a lot more than we
do.”
Polanco’s family, meanwhile,
has fi led a federal civil rights lawsuit
alleging that the city violated
her constitutional rights and the
Americans With Disabilities Act.
Her death added to a growing death
toll of transgender women of color
nationwide — 21 trans or gender
non-conforming women have died
violent deaths this year, according
to the Human Rights Campaign —
and sparked outrage among criminal
justice advocates and many in
the LGBTQ community.
“With Ms. Polanco, it seems people
are talking about it, but I don’t
know how much it is ingrained in
people’s mind that people are dying
simply because they are a part
of the trans community,” Williams
said.
Polanco’s case represents a prime
example of why issues disproportionately
facing trans women of color
have shot to the forefront of the
political discussion this year. The
local movement to fully decriminalize
sex work emerged in February
and blossomed in the months
that followed, due to the efforts of
DecrimNY, a coalition dedicated to
ending all law enforcement efforts
aimed at sex work.
Williams, who has previously
expressed his approval for the decriminalization
of sex work, said
in this interview that he has long
“been for the legalization of prostitution.”
Sex workers locally and
nationally, however, have said they
specifi cally favor decriminalization
over legalization, which is at
least in part because regulatory
requirements could create unnecessary
hurdles for them to carry
out their work.
“I think we’ll have something
formally to say on it very soon,”
Williams said regarding that distinction.
The public advocate’s views on
other criminal justice reform issues
are more settled. One day before
Williams sat down with Gay
City News, the City Council voted
to approve the closing of the jails
on Rikers Island by 2026 and open
four borough-based jails in Brooklyn,
the Bronx, Queens, and Manhattan.
City lawmakers who voted
for the plan framed it as a win for
criminal justice reform, but Williams
still isn’t completely sold on
it.
“We should not say that we
closed Rikers, and we should not
be saying we ended mass incarceration,”
Williams said. “We did
neither of those. What we did was
➤ JUMAANE WILLIAMS, continued on p.9
October 24 - November 6 8 , 2019 | GayCityNews.com
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