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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC and now we begin our month of May round of interviews with the New York City Democratic primary candidates for mayor. Our theme for this round is economic recovery meets economic justice. Now, we know that any new mayor will have to guide the comeback from COVID, after so many hundreds of thousands of jobs were lost in the city.

We also know the economic devastation was not spread evenly across the board, and we know that fighting economic inequality was how Mayor de Blasio got elected eight years ago, and that that work already had many miles to go before COVID. Economic recovery meets economic justice. With us today on this candidate Maya Wiley, former New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board Chair and counsel to Mayor de Blasio, civil rights attorney, and MSNBC commentator. Maya, thanks for doing another round with us, and welcome back to WNYC.

Maya Wiley: Thanks Brian, it's always a pleasure to be with you.

Brian: To start by assessing the starting point, can you talk for a minute about how you see the economic impact of COVID on the city generally, and also specifically in terms of uneven distribution of that economic pain?

Maya: This is such a critical question for the city in a moment of reckoning. Look, this is an economic crisis of massive proportion, but it's very different from say, the Great Recession of 2008, because as a pandemic created economic crisis, it means where we have seen the hardest hits, and while we have all been traumatized, we've lost 31,000 souls in the city, an incredible job loss.

The reality is-- And according to one study, I saw 88% of the people who died from the disease, were people of color, were Black, were Latino, were Asian, and that should be no surprise to us given the nature of this public health crisis because where did we have the greatest overcrowding in housing conditions because there isn't enough affordable housing? It was in communities of color.

Where did we have the highest proportion of essential workers, people who showed up to work despite COVID and often in jobs where they weren't getting protective gear, those were people who were heavily Black and Latino, and Asian once again. We shouldn't forget, we don't collect the data in the way we should, but also we have the biggest Native American population, urban based population in the country.

What we're seeing now in this recovery is that we have to invest in recovering the people in this city who were decimated by structural racism, even before COVID because it was those conditions, and those failures of investment, and the failure to correct the wrongs that have been done for so many years to people of color in this city and in this country. That is the reasons why those were the communities of greatest vulnerability when COVID hit.

Brian: I'm guessing that before COVID, you were already considering a run for mayor, what would have been at the heart of your economic justice platform originally and how much has the emphasis had to change to meet the change conditions that the pandemic has forced upon us?

Maya: Well, you know this Brian, but I'm actually not just the child of a father who was also a father to the economic justice movement coming out of the civil rights movement. My whole career as a civil rights lawyer and advocate has always been focused on these very questions. It's what I've done when I was at the ACLU fighting to get more money into public school systems in Louisiana and in the NAACP Legal Defense Fund fighting to save maternal and child care beds in Harlem.

For me, this has been a life's mission, and one of the things that I was seeing also as a mother was how we have been losing so much ground, despite some of the work and efforts and gains we've made over the years, and Donald Trump's administration was obviously a big part of that. Everything from the attack on our immigrant residents of all races, to the fact that we were seeing incredible disinvestments and cuts in critical programs and services and even attack on our Democratic power and voice in this country.

Those things really were for me as a mother, seeing how they were playing out not just for my own children, who were wondering how they could afford to stay in the city they were born in and never want to leave, but also their friends. We are at risk now of COVID I would say, though, of losing a generation, losing a generation not because COVID created all the problems, but it deepened, and made more significant, the trauma, and the failure to invest in opportunities for all our kids of color in this city.

I would say, it's not so much that it changed what I would do, but it deepened the resolve, and made me so much more driven to us recognizing as a city just how much we have to bring to bear on these problems. The truth is they are not intractable even in an economic crisis, they are not intractable. These are problems we created and we should take hope and power from that because it means there problems we can solve, but it does require a grounded sense of what's wrong based in a knowledge and understanding of what we have failed to do in the past, and the resources that we have available to us and government.

Let me just give you a couple examples, Brian, we've got to get people back to work, you know as well as I do that the highest jobless rate in this city are in those same communities that had the greatest deaths and infection rates due to COVID. That means that when we put our resources to work fixing our economy like building things we need built and fixing things we need fix, which is what we do as a city with our capital construction dollars, we can spend more now and should spend more now.

I'm going to spend $10 billion in capital construction to build things like more deeply affordable housing so folks can afford the rent because half of the people facing eviction in this city are Black, but when I'm doing that, I'm also going to do local targeted hiring, something we have not done with any real resolve in this city, which is to say that we're going to commit to hiring people in the communities with the highest rates of unemployment in this city, which is exactly the communities that we should be investing in for jobs, and orienting our workforce development program monies.

We've got workforce development dollars in this city we've been spending for years, but being smarter about how we're organizing those dollars, so we're actually investing in our young people coming out of public schools, so that they are able to track into the jobs that we're not just creating as a city, but also that the private sector is creating. We shouldn't forget that it is creating jobs and we've actually added jobs and tax during COVID.

That is an opportunity if we decide as I will as mayor, that we're fundamentally going to change this digital divide and start to connect our communities, our students of color to the very career opportunities that they have been denied for far too long.

Brian: Listeners, our phones are open for mayoral candidate Maya Wiley, primarily on the topic, economic recovery meets economic justice. 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280. All the other leading candidates will be coming on to talk about this too during the month of May. We have Scott Stringer scheduled for Wednesday. We'll see if he keeps that date, which was made before the sexual misconduct allegations against him broke, but I have a feeling he will.

Scott Stringer Wednesday as it stands, and then other candidates two per week more or less the same way we did our Ask the Mayor tryouts round in April. Two candidates per week more or less in the subsequent weeks this month. Today for Maya Wiley on post-COVID economic recovery meeting long term economic justice 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280.

Maya, you're running in a generally more progressive field than de Blasio did eight years ago, I think it's accurate to say. How do you distinguish yourself for example from Diane Morales who generally gets reported on as the most progressive candidate and who you told us last time people should list second on their rank choice voting ballots if they vote for you first?

Maya: Brian, I am someone who, as I said, not only comes out of the activism as family history, and that from a family where-- My brother and I knew where a picket line was before we knew what a picnic was, but that as a result spending my entire career in doing racial justice work in a way that builds multiracial coalition. As I said, I also founded an organization when September 11th happened.

I had a baby in a bouncy seat and what happened was what always happens in a crisis, which is the whole city was reeling. We were traumatized, we had job loss, all kinds of issues. The federal government was sending $21 billion to the state and city to invest in our recovery, our economic recovery, but guess who got cut out of the catchment area for those dollars? It was Chinatown and the Lower East Side.

That was exactly the kind of government decision-making that perpetuates racial inequality. I founded with a friend, another Black woman who's a political scientist, The Center For Social Inclusion, committed to up ending and we were explicit about calling it out structural racism. We made it a mission in 2002 at a time when nobody thought that that was a term that anyone would ever use and now it has become one that we all use.

That's a wonderful and important thing, but I've spent my whole career focused on the solutions that actually change that and actually lift all boats. I'm the only candidate in this race that has actually done that inside city hall because I was grateful for the opportunity to show the city how we could start to solve the digital divide for real. Getting the city to see how it could do things that had never done before.

One of the things that I did was I said, "I've found the money," showed the city where the revenue was that we could deploy and pulled four different agencies together and said, "You know what?" Because we didn't have a universal broadband agency at city government, so I got four agencies working together so that we got ultimately every single apartment in Queensbridge houses, largest public housing development in North America, free broadband paid for by the city and had laid out plans to do that in every borough. Now, I left in 2016, but I say that as just a proof point, that city government can be so much more transformative than it has been, but what it does take is that background.

Brian: Let me jump in and ask you. The distinction that you're making between yourself and Diane Morales is one of experience. Do you have any policy differences with her in the area of economic recovery and justice?

Maya: Where I have focused my attention, as I've said, is on capital construction as a way to create 100,000 new jobs and target them in the communities that need them, but I've also proposed a universal care economy plan. This is one which really is a game changer, particularly on one of the top three costs of living in the city, which is childcare, but also recognizing that it is women of color, Black and Latino who've been hardest hit in this pandemic economically because of the loss of care work.

What I'm going to do is create universal care centers starting in the communities, again, hardest hit so that they were creating union jobs, good jobs in care. I'm very proud to be endorsed by FCIU 1199, that represents our essential workers who are caregivers, home health care givers, as well as nurses in nursing homes, people who are critically important to our communities, but we for far too long have not been caring for the people who care for us.

As part of those community care centers, which will be drop-off centers for elder care, and childcare is grants, is $5,000 grants to put directly in the pockets starting with 100,000 neediest families in order that they can care for themselves and their families and undocumented immigrants will be eligible for those grants.

Brian: All right. Let me ask you one more question like this because in our previous two rounds of interviews, I carefully avoided asking any of you to compare yourselves to other candidates because I just wanted to let listeners get to know each of you as yourselves, especially at the beginning of the race, and also not give too much press to anyone just because they led in the early polls, but now it's getting close and the polls keep indicating a clear top to Andrew Yang and Eric Adams. When it comes to economic justice or anything else, why would you make a better mayor than either of those two, in particular? Because you have to catch them if you're going to win.

Maya: Let me just say this. The only person leading in the polls is undecided.

Brian: That's true. I'll take that point.

Maya: It is a wide-open race. I'm very proud to be the only woman in the top tier of this race. Now, what I will say about what makes me more qualified is exactly this. I have spent my entire career as a change maker and as a mother who has raised kids in New York City, who has also been a change maker, who's navigated everything from chairing the New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board and getting the case of Daniel Pantaleo, the officer who killed Eric Garner over to the New York City Police Department, protecting civilian prosecution of that case.

She had to fight for it behind the scenes. Is ultimately what got them off the force, but knowing exactly what's happening with policing in the city and how to transform it, but also knowing how to do things like get city government to deliver on broadband access. I was also the person who held Verizon accountable under our city contracts for not doing what it was obligated to do and formulating that lawsuit against Verizon, to hold it accountable, as well as getting free broadband to Queensbridge houses.

I've worked on women and minority-owned business enterprise contracts, getting it up from 500 million when I walked in the door in 2014, got handed a title with no staff and no program. I got it to 1.6 billion in one year. I'll say two things, I'm a changemaker, but I'm also a member of the community who knows what it feels like to be in a segregated school, but also knows the policies that fix that.

I don't think there's any other candidate in this field who actually can say all those things because this historic crisis what we need is a vastly different kind of leadership than this city has ever had before, because that's how we're going to get pulled together, but also recognize the tremendous, tremendous amount of resources and expertise and know-how that we have in every single community and also in our government sector and our for-profit sector that can come together and actually show this whole country how it's done, how we actually solved what's been broken for too long even before COVID and how we'll use this crisis to come out of that.

Brian: Happened to have a call lined up on one of the things you just briefly mentioned. Alexis in Hell's Kitchen, you're on WNYC with candidate Maya Wiley. Hi, Alexis.

Alexis: Hi, good morning.

Maya: Good morning, Alexis.

Alexis: Good morning. I do have a question for you. I know the topic of the show is economic justice and long-term economic recovery, but of course, intimately related to that is justice in our public schools. We have the most segregated public schools in the country here in New York City. I would like to know if you plan to desegregate the schools and how you would do so.

Maya: Thank you so much for that question, Alexis, because as a child, I attended a Black overcrowded underfunded public elementary school. I know what it feels like to be at the top of my class and two years behind grade level not because my parents did anything wrong because they did everything right, but because the system was broken and I'm proud that I co-chaired the school diversity advisory group that came up spent 18 months, had 42 different stakeholders at the table.

We met with over 800 New Yorkers in every one of our five boroughs to talk about this so that we worked collaboratively, but we came up with 200 pages of recommendations. I'll just summarize by saying it starts with eliminating discriminatory admissions policies and practices in our school system. I stand by what we said in that report. It's also about resources and improving the investment in resources in our schools that are in communities of color because that's one of the things our parents rightly asked for. I'm going to hire 2,500 new teachers. That's going to be both to bring class sizes down.

We have 618 schools that were grossly overcrowded before COVID, largely in communities of color and segregated schools. We will not only bring them down, we will have an opportunity to use that to hire more diverse teachers, which also improves educational opportunity for our kids. We're also going to put trauma-informed care in the schools because our kids are traumatized and, in particularly, in our schools with kids of color. The point is we're going to bring more resources into the classrooms to improve the quality of our schools overall and we're going to eliminate those practices that actually segregate and discriminate at the same time.

Brian: This is WNYC FM HD & AM New York, WNJT FM 88.1 Trenton, WNJP 88.5 Sussex, WNJY 89.3 Netcong, and WNJO 90.3 Toms River. We are New York and New Jersey public radio. A few more minutes with mayoral candidate, Maya Wiley, as we begin our May round of interviews with the candidates on the topic this time economic recovery post COVID meets economic justice. Marlene in Queens, you're on WNYC. Marlene, thanks for calling in.

Marlene: Hi. I'm calling [unintelligible 00:21:13] what you said about developing new buildings for homeless and for underprivileged. We have so much real estate in the city that has been booming throughout this pandemic and so much empty real estate. Why would we need to build anything more which would add to pollution and add to the density of population?

I live in Long Island city and I moved here 23 years ago when there was nothing here and now it is so dense and so overpopulated without resources that support the neighborhood. I don't want to see that happening all over this city, so I would like to know how you would deal with that.

Maya: Thank you, Marlene. I really appreciate that question. Look, this is exactly the point. Is we have to use every lever we have to create more affordability in this city. One, because affordability is also a growth strategy. We saw that we added jobs and more people moved into the city because we became cheaper and that's actually good for us. That helps us grow in ways that are positive. To your point about-- It's not all about new construction. Obviously, some of it is because we are in desperate need for affordable housing.

We have far too many people in this city who are so rent burdened at that's why 400,000 people are facing eviction. We have another 57,000 people who are homeless. Those numbers are astronomical, and we've got to be able to keep people in their homes now, which is why I have an eviction moratorium plan that is not only about keeping people in their homes, but also subsidizing our homeowners and our small landlords who also need to be able to collect some resources to pay their mortgages and hold on to the resources that they've been building for themselves and their families.

We do have to create more affordable housing that's deeply affordable for folks because we are seeing, and this is true in Long Island City as well, folks getting priced out. You're absolutely right. That one, we have to pay attention to climate change and pollution and so I have a climate action plan for that, that you can find at mayawileyformayor.com that includes doubling the amount of open space, but it's also about utilizing vacancy. We've got shuttered hotels.

That's an opportunity for us to create a housing first strategy and create more supportive housing so that we're getting people who are homeless into homes they can actually afford as well as negotiating with private developers because some of these things, of course, is not directly in the city's control in terms of vacancy, but where we have seen this ask from the real estate industry to consider rezoning, for example, from commercial space and turning it into residential, that's an opportunity for the city to bargain for more deeply affordable housing as part of that. The truth is it's many different mechanisms that we need to utilize to ensure that people can afford the rent because far too many New Yorkers can't.

Brian: Michael in Midwood, you're on WNYC with Maya Wiley. Hi, Michael.

Michael: Hi. Is there an echo, should I turn off my radio?

Brian: We can hear you fine. Yes. There's a delay coming out of your idea. You can just ignore it.

Michael: As long as I'm good. Yes. I want to thank the candidate for coming on and talking about her policies and I love your show. I've been listening and I've been hearing [unintelligible 00:25:43] to reasons why if I were a person of color to vote for you, I'm not a person of color. I'm a white guy in a white neighborhood. I'm in Midwood.

Maya: You're near me.

Michael: Oh, cool. I feel ignored, like, "What about me?" I may not be officially on the privileged, but I don't feel very privileged when I look at my bank account. What's going to help me by voting for you?

Maya: I really appreciate you raising that, Michael, because one of the things that has always been important to understand about doing more economic justice work is that what we know is it creates more opportunities for everyone. You're absolutely right. We should not ignore the fact that when we're looking at unemployment rates, for example, 5% less white men working now than were before COVID hit us in this city, but it's 10% for Black women.

The issue isn't whether we ignore white men, that's not what we do. What we do though is think about our resources and how we invest them in ways that both bring us out of this crisis. My point, for example, about the capital construction plan isn't that it only helps people of color. Absolutely not. We're going to create a hundred thousand new jobs. Those are also going to include good union construction jobs and other jobs. It's going to be a whole lot of jobs frankly for white men too.

Also, for the small businesses and light manufacturing that we're going to procure services from in order to get that construction and that renovation done. The truth is we also want to make sure we don't continue to make the same mistakes over and over again which is missing the opportunity to reach the communities that have the highest rates of unemployment. Because so often what we ignore is the growth strategy that equity creates because when we put more money in the pockets of more residents because we're getting them jobs, they're also spending more money in the economy and that actually makes it better for all of us.

I'll give you another example that's a little different. We know that we have a homeless crisis in this city. That homeless crisis is a humanitarian crisis. We have folks who are mentally ill and substance addicted, choosing to live on the streets because the shelters themselves are scary and dangerous places, but that's also creating a real quality of life issue for people and real concerns for businesses about coming back and about safety. We can solve that problem, which makes it better for everyone by investing in the supportive housing and the right resourcing of outreach by real professionals, so that we're getting folks in the housing that they have mental health services and rehabilitation services and because it works.

It actually brings back an economy for everyone when we solve that human rights violation, that is homelessness, and get folks into housing. The truth is we have to recognize we're in this together and that when we invest smartly, we all come back and that's why I'm running for mayor.

Brian: Maya Wiley, running for mayor. Thank you so much for joining us. I guess I will talk to you next Thursday next week when the first official democratic primary broadcast debate takes place. That'll be here on WNYC as well as on NY1, Errol Louis, and I, and Josefa Velásquez from the news organization The Citi, will be the moderators. Listeners, make a note of that. That's my first plug for the broadcast debate that will be in next Thursday night at seven o'clock. Maya Wiley, thank you so much for today. I'll talk to you and all the candidates then.

Maya: Thank you so much. I'm looking forward to it, Brian. See you next week.

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