Name | Felicia Singh |
District | New York City Council District 32 |
What is your plan for getting the city back to work, particularly in its hardest hit sectors? What kind of workforce development programs do you envision that would ensure access to communities of color and people with disabilities? | The city must invest in bringing our arts and culture sector back by directly supporting artists, venues, and cultural organizations. Arts and culture are not only part of what makes New York City so unique, but the arts and culture sector brings an incredible amount of revenue and jobs to our economy. As we support artists in getting back to work and supporting arts and cultural organizations in recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, we need to be intentional about ensuring an equitable recovery that centers our communities of color and people with disabilities. In order to do this, the city must prioritize providing funding to smaller, independent arts and cultural organizations, especially those that are led by and center BIPOC communities. The city council can provide guidance and advocacy and create legislation that incentivizes workforce development. Additionally, in order to fully support an equitable return to work in the arts and culture sectors, we must ensure our arts and culture workers are properly supported. This includes making sure that artists have access to a liveable wage, healthcare, and affordable housing. |
What is your plan for creating healthy stable communities? How do you envision enlivening vacant commercial and city owned spaces? | Healthy, stable communities come from fully funding communities, and prioritizing spaces that foster community building. We could expand where artists and arts and cultural organizations could utilize public spaces. The organization, Art on the Ave NYC has provided a model in which visual artists’ work is presented on vacant storefront spaces on Columbus Ave. We could expand this to incorporate other storefronts across the boroughs and other mediums of art. Additionally, we should be utilizing venues such as the Forest Park bandshell to hold ticketed events to expand live performances. We need to make sure that retail and commercial space stays affordable so that arts and cultural organizations can have a stable space within communities. |
What do you foresee is the role of creative economies in supporting economic recovery in New York City particularly for communities most affected by environmental, housing, and health instability due to COVID including our aging, immigrant, and working class communities of color? | If we only invest in getting our largest arts and cultural organizations back to work, we will not support an equitable economic recovery for our artists and organizations or our city. Before the COVID pandemic, the arts and culture sector brings in a sizable amount of money to our city, and we must support them in returning. In order to do so, the city must invest in our smaller, independent arts and cultural organizations by providing grants to these venues and artists at the same rate as our large institutions. |
What is your plan for the city’s school system and what is your vision of the role that arts in education plays? | With the recent New York State Budget victory to finally equitably fund public schools through a phase-in plan over the next three years, the next step is to ensure that the funds are used to provide fully equitable education to all schools and students, and to make sure that our schools are structured with an anti-racist lens. The creation of anti-racist education does not stop with professional development for teachers and implementation of explicitly anti-racist curricula. We must build systems that actively dismantle the segregation and inequities that have plagued our school system since its creation. Part of anti-racist education is providing opportunities for students at every school to have access to arts education, not as an afterthought, but as a core part of education. We need to make sure that funding for the arts is prioritized in all schools, not just schools that serve majority white and wealthy students. In addition, the City could create increased youth access to arts and culture events through reduced price tickets that are subsidized by the city. This would not only increase accessibility of arts and culture events to low income, BIPOC communities, but support integrating arts and culture venues into communities, engaging communities in conversations, and increasing quality of life through arts exposure at an early age. |
What are your plans for supporting incarcerated and formerly incarcerated New Yorkers? | Currently, our system is a criminal injustice system built on the history of punishment rather than restoration and rehabilitation. We need to fully fund communities to address the root causes of instability and provide people with the resources they need to feel safe. Part of supporting incarcerated New Yorkers is to advocate to immediately release anyone being held on cash bail, folks incarcerated for low-level drug offenses and non-violent crimes, and plan to close Rikers fully within 5 years. During these 5 years, we must actively work to create the systems needed for successful and supported re-entry. To support formerly incarcerated New Yorkers, we must open halfway houses with 24/7 supportive reentry programs. All boroughs would need to take on implementing a welcoming and safe transition for those living in halfway houses. This would impact my district because we live in a majority 1-2 family home community and half-way houses, shelters, jails are seen to add to property value decreases. I believe that we can change the dialogue and that people can grow to see this as a property value increase. In order to really achieve this, we need to redefine what constitutes a ‘safe community.’ A safe community is one where residents take care of each other in a way that is anti-racist and centers those who’ve been marginalized and isolated from communities. It means reteaching and having the community play a larger role in re-entry or those who are exiting the incarceration system. This could look like small businesses employing a large number of halfway house residents and renting to those reentering the community. A large part of supporting currently and formerly incarcerated individuals should involve supporting them as the full, individual human beings that they are, and making sure that they have access to things like arts programs. As folks navigate the criminal justice system, we cannot strip them of their humanity by removing art as an option for them. |
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