16 THE QUEENS COURIER • JANUARY 23, 2020 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT WWW.QNS.COM
Van Bramer drops out of QBP race
BY BILL PARRY
bparry@schnepsmedia.com
He was the fi rst one to launch
his candidacy for Queens borough
president back in May
2019, but in an early morning
campaign email to his supporters
Tuesday, Councilman Jimmy
Van Bramer announced he was
ending his run for the offi ce.
“My family is the reason I
love this borough and its residents;
they are the ones who
instilled Queens values in me
and inspired me to be an advocate
for working families. But
family circumstances have been
weighing on me for some time,
causing me to reconsider the
timing and feasibility of this
campaign,” Van Bramer wrote.
“Prioritizing my responsibilities
as a son and brother is
where my attention needs to be
right now. And so I am ending
my campaign today. While this
is a diffi cult decision, this is the
right one for me and my family
at this time.”
Van Bramer’s campaign
picked up endorsements from
Public Advocate Jumaane Williams
and progressive stars
Zephyr Teachout and
Cynthia Nixon. He
had raised $17,360
since July 15 and
has $203,185 to
spend. Councilman
Donovan
Richards,
who
had stepped
up his attacks
on Van Bramer’s
opposition to Ama- zon
HQ2 deal in Long Island City
in recent weeks, was the fi rst to
issue a statement upon hearing
Van Bramer stepped out
of the race.
“Jimmy Van Bramer has
always added breadth to the
discourse on the future of
Queens and I know that
he will continue to do so,”
Richards said. “Family
should always be a priority.
My thoughts are with
him and his family at this diffi -
cult time.”
Last year, Van Bramer said
he had the best Queens
resume for the job.
He was born at old
St. John’s Hospital
on Queens
Boulevard, raised
in Astoria and
attended P.S. 70 and William
Cullen Bryant High School.
After graduating from St.
John’s University, Van Bramer
became a community organizer
and went to work as a reporter
for Lesbian and Gay New
York, which is now Gay City
News, where he
brought attention
to the
AIDS epidemic,
bias
and hate
crimes.
V a n
B r a m e r
went on to
serve as chief
external aff airs offi cer of Queens
Library for a decade and also
served as president of Queens
Council on the Arts. He said
those experiences served him
well when he was elected to the
City Council in 2009 representing
Long Island City, Sunnyside,
Woodside and parts of Astoria.
He was appointed chairman
of the Cultural Aff airs and
Libraries Committee in 2010,
a position Van Bramer is still
holding now in his third term.
QNS reached out to Van
Bramer and is awaiting a
response.
“I will, of course, continue to
fi ght for the working people of
our borough and city every day
on the New York City Council
and beyond,” Van Bramer concluded
in his message to supporters.
“I want to thank all of
you — our campaign’s amazing
supporters, volunteers,
and donors for your faith in
me and our shared vision to
build a brighter future for
Queens.”
A look back at MLK’s historic address at Queens College
BY CARLOTTA MOHAMED
cmohamed@schnepsmedia.com
Queens College commemorated
the life of civil rights
leader and activist Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr. on Monday, Jan.
20.
Dr. King spoke at Queens
College on May 13, 1965, less
than a year aft er Queens College
student Andrew Goodman was
murdered in Mississippi alongside
two other Civil rights activists
by members of the Ku Klux
Klan during Freedom Summer
1964.
“As we observe the upcoming
holiday in honor of the
Reverend Dr. Martin Luther
King Jr., we at Queens College
are inevitably reminded of the
personal connection we have to
the fallen civil rights leader and
the movement he led,” Queens
College Interim President
William Tramontano said in his
statement honoring Dr. King.
In his 40-minute address he
gave at Queens College on May
13, 1965, Dr. King acknowledged
Goodman’s activism in
galvanizing support for the passage
of the Voting Rights Act
of 1965.
“I certainly stand here,” King
said, “under the inspiration
of the fact that it was Queens
College that gave to America,
and indeed to the world,
Andrew Goodman, whose creative
witness will certainly live
for generations yet unborn.
He, along with others, paid the
supreme price for this struggle
and I’m sure that we will see in
many ways that his death was
not in vain.”
Th e spirit of King’s crusade
lives on at Queens College,
Tramontano said, in the persons
of individuals who, like
Goodman, were part of it.
Artifacts of their participation
can be found in the Queens
College Civil Rights Archives,
which include those of Rabbi
Moshe Shur, who is leading a
group of Queens College students
on a tour of signifi -
cant sites in the Civil Rights
Movement as part of the annual
In the Footsteps of Dr. King program.
An ever-present reminder
greets all on campus each day
when bells toll the beginning
of each hour from the library’s
Chaney-Goodman-Schwerner
Clocktower.
Dr. King’s address was delivered
as the fi rst in a series of
John F. Kennedy Memorial
Lectures, honoring another
important leader recently felled
by an assassin’s bullet. Part lecture,
part sermon, it refl ected
on the entirety of the struggle
of African-Americans for
racial equality in their country
post slavery.
“Because of the lack of educational
opportunities, because
of discrimination and because
of the denial of apprenticeship
training,” observed King, “we
as a people have been limited to
unskilled or semi-skilled labor,
not because we didn’t have the
ability to do the job but because
opportunities denied us the
training to do them.”
Further, he warned, “Poverty,
ignorance, disease, social isolation,
economic deprivation
breed crime, whatever the
racial group may be. Criminal
responses are environmental
and not racial. It is a tortuous
logic to use the tragic results of
segregation as an argument for
the continuation of it. It is necessary
to go back to the causal
root and grapple with that.
If our nation is to grow and
develop, we must see this in a
real way.”
Yet, in the face of the harsh
realities presented to his congregation
that day, ever the
Baptist minister, King off ered
direction, saying, “you love
every man not because you
like him, not because his ways
appeal to you, but as theologians
would say, ‘because God
loves him.’ You rise to the level
of loving the person who does
the evil deed, while hating the
deed that the person does. You
resist the evil with all of your
Photo by Irv Steinfi nk, The Phoenix, Queens College student newspaper, May 18, 1965.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speaking at Queens College on May 13, 1965.
might and all of the strength
that you can muster. You maintain
this active good will knowing
that hate destroys the hater
as well as the hated.”
And, ever a man of faith,
he parted on that historic day
at Queens College with, “I
still have faith in the future.
However dark the night, however
dreary the day, I still
believe that we shall overcome.”
“Today, almost 55 years later,
we honor his memory and continue
to pursue the dream of a
better and more just society for
all of its members,” Tramontano
said.
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