Today, Council Member Tiffany Cabán (District 22), released the following statement in response to the committee assignments announced at today’s Stated Meeting:
I am grateful to City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams for the exciting opportunity to chair the Committee on Women and Gender Equity and to sit on six others: Public Safety; General Welfare; Civil Service and Labor; Housing and Buildings; Small Business; and Mental Health, Disabilities, and Addictions.
Each of these committees will deliberate legislation and oversee agencies that are vital to building the safe, healthy city our constituents need and deserve. On each of them, I will work hard to move us away from ineffective, violent systems of surveillance and punishment, and toward the sort of supportive, compassionate programs with a demonstrated track record of ensuring safety and health.
- Women and Gender Equity: Especially as the first ever majority-woman Council gets underway, I look forward to working with my colleagues to use this position to provide supports to survivors of gender-based violence, harassment and abuse; guarantee dignified conditions for workers in traditionally-gendered professions, including currently unpaid and invisible care work; and shift resources and power away from patriarchal systems of violence and punishment and toward the compassionate, life-giving systems which we have sidelined and devalued for too long. I also look forward to working with Speaker Adams to expand access to affordable, quality child care and ensure that child care workers, who are majority women of color, receive the pay and dignity they deserve, and to investigate the ways that the COVID-19 pandemic has had gendered economic impacts. I will not simply advocate for the most wealthy and powerful women to be on a par with the most wealthy and powerful men; I will champion the needs and hopes of the marginalized, oppressed and exploited: queer, trans, gender non-conforming and non-binary New Yorkers, Black, indigenous and other women and femmes of color, and women and femmes of all immigrantion documentation statuses, those incarcerated and institutionalized, those impoverished and precarious, those with disabilities, those performing sex work and other criminalized jobs, and more.
- Public Safety: I will work to change the scale and scope of policing so that our city government is no longer tasking law enforcement officials with solving a wide array of social problems that they are ill-equipped to address and that often lead to increased harm.
- General Welfare: I will work to grow a robust set of social programs that provide all New Yorkers, particularly those within our homeless shelters and the child welfare system, with the supportive services that are key pillars of a fulfilling life.
- Civil Service and Labor: I will work to ensure all workers the dignified conditions and livable wages they need, including strong just cause protections, and to guarantee that workers in shrinking sectors like fossil fuels and jails are provided a just transition into good jobs in growth sectors.
- Housing and Buildings: I will work to enhance the rights of tenants and working class homeowners, to hold exploitative landlords and property developers accountable, and to realize the promise of a homes guarantee.
- Small Business: I will work to protect local treasures from being pushed out by large corporations, to cultivate worker-owned cooperatives, and to ease the strain on small businesses so that it is easier to guarantee good pay, working conditions, and union protections for their employees.
- Mental Health, Disabilities and Addictions: I will work to ensure that we are providing high quality services and amenities, including a comprehensive array of harm reduction options, including safe consumption sites, to struggling and suffering New Yorkes, rather than criminalizing and caging them.
I cannot wait to join my colleagues in rolling up our sleeves and getting to work.