Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. At the Met Gala last night, Mayor Adams attended wearing a jacket that said End Gun Violence. At the same time, the New York Post reports that the NYPD's new anti-gun teams are mainly conducting car stops have only turned up three firearms that way in the first few weeks of the program and that mostly they're handing out low-level traffic offenses.

Our next guest is the latest guest in our series 51 Council Members in 52 weeks in which we're inviting all 51 members of the New York City Council in this year, in which most of the council is new because of term limits, and its majority female for the first time.

Councilmember Amanda Farías from district 18 in the Bronx's co-chair of the women's caucus in the city council. She was scheduled for today before the news broke of the reported Supreme court decision draft, which would overturn Roe v. Wade. As Councilmember Farías show and tell item, she was already bringing for this segment. We're inviting everyone to bring some source of pride for show and tell from their district. She told us she would be symbolically bringing Sonia Sotomayor who grew up in the district. Again, that was before last night's bombshell.

District 18 covers the south Bronx neighborhoods of Castle Hill, Clason Point, Harding Park, Parkchester, Shore Haven, and Soundview. Councilmember Farías' bio page says she grew up in Soundview, a second-generation Afro-Latina of Puerto Rican and Dominican descent, whose experience includes working for the New York city council from 2013 to 2017 in several different capacities. Including director of special projects, managing the women's caucus and a districtwide participatory budgeting process.

The bio says after her time in the council, Amanda joined the consortium for worker education as an assistant director in 2017 to manage workforce development programming in the Bronx. We know that job creation is one of her big issues. Councilmember Farías, thanks for joining 51 council members in 52 weeks. Welcome to WNYC.

Councilmember Farías: Thank you so much, Brian. I'm really happy to be here.

Brian Lehrer: We usually end the segment with the show and tell portion. Today we'll start with it. Why did you symbolically bring Justice Sonia Sotomayor?

Councilmember Farías: For me being a young Afro-Latina that grew up in Soundview, the neighborhood that she's from, where she also grew up, it's always been really amazing to have someone like that to look up to, to see reach such a monumental historic position. Really, I think not only for young people like myself growing up in the community, but even my own trajectory, it feels like it resonates more so being that my part of my neighborhood or my part of the Bronx is really just pushing out a giant like her.

Brian Lehrer: Do you think if the Supreme Court does overturn Roe v. Wade, that that would be overwhelmingly unpopular in your district or mixed? Or what would you say?

Councilmember Farías: I would say it would be pretty unpopular in my district. I think when you look at the Bronx or New York City as a whole, really folks understand that this is about healthcare, this isn't about options or choice or faith. This really is about prioritizing women and young girls' healthcare.

Brian Lehrer: For you as co-chair of the women's caucus, would city council have any policy initiatives to protect a right to choose, to introduce, or are abortion rights sufficiently protected at the state level?

Councilmember Farías: Abortion rights are protected at the state level. I think after what we saw from last night, it's something definitely to consider looking into on how to solidify and ensure that we can make sure women's healthcare and the right and access to easy, free, affordable abortion is protected here in New York City and state. What I will say is I think New York City has prioritized women's healthcare that is not going to change. New York state has made it very clear that we will always be the ones to lead by example both in healthcare and abortion access and other things like us being a sanctuary state.

Brian Lehrer: We talked earlier in the show about how this could become an issue in the governor's race. If Lee Zeldin is the Republican nominee as expected, he describes himself as pro-life and says he would appoint a what he calls pro-life health commissioner. Do you think a backlash against that prospect would increase turnout in your district?

Councilmember Farías: Absolutely. I think folks really will see that it is a moment that we have to immediately respond to because what we've learned, I think over the last four years in the previous administrations, at the federal level. I would say too many things we've taken for granted as things that are our rights. Things we do not have to think about having access to or having afforded to us have quickly been swept under the rug and taken away or at risk to. I think folks are more cognizant. These things are resonating more deeply with folks, and I think people will turn out in numbers.

Brian Lehrer: Would you like to talk about anything you've been doing as co-chair of the women's caucus in this year that city council has become majority female for the first time?

Councilmember Farías: Sure. I feel like my job has been full circle, now. I started out at the council actually as managing the women's caucus and now being co-chair it's really a full-circle moment for me. Over the last several months, I think one of our large focuses was equal payday. We had a huge equal payday rally at city hall steps. It was actually the first to put momentum back into having rallies in city hall with speaker Adrian Adams, to focus on the wage inequities that we still have per title, per sector for women of all backgrounds against what men made in the year before.

Being that we're still fighting for equitable wages, we're still fighting for transparency and salary. It's really something that is at the forefront of our conversations here in the city council as a majority women of color-led body in the city council.

Brian Lehrer: Do you think there are any policy differences or more a matter of moving things to the front of the line that have emerged from a majority female city council compared to the mostly male councils of the recent past, even if they were mostly progressive?

Councilmember Farías: I think for the short time that I've been here, what I've seen most are the women prioritizing how do we create generational shifts and changes in our policy-making and our budgetary allocations? How are we going to get the most out of the investments we're trying to make right now? Versus maybe somewhat of a more, I have two years here I have four years here. How do I show that I am the person that needs to be reelected? I think our focus going into these spaces and these rooms and these hearings is really about prioritizing generational shifts in our communities.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, if you're just joining us. My, guest is New York City Councilmember, Amanda Farías from district 18 in the south Bronx, the latest guest in our series 51 Council Members in 52 weeks here on week 18 district 18 up this week, as we try to touch every neighborhood of New York City with its elected representative in 2022. By the way, this just in, from the associated press, after we spent a lot of the show speculating on whether the-- well not speculating on, but discussing the Justice Alito overturning Roe v. Wade decision draft that was leaked to Politico, assuming that it was real and saying, if it's real, if this turns out to be real, we don't know for sure that this is real.This looks real.

Well, the AP is now reporting, "Chief Justice Roberts confirms authenticity of leak, draft opinion in abortion case orders investigation." That would be an investigation of the leak, but that is big, AP reporting that Chief Justice Roberts confirming the authenticity of the leaked draft. Councilmember, changing subjects, the city just elevated its COVID status yesterday to code yellow or medium risk up from code green or low risk. Are you seeing it in your district?

Councilmember Farías: I haven't particularly seen it in my district, but my district is predominantly essential workers and healthcare workers, gig on demand workers. A lot of my neighbors are proactively masking, getting vaccinated and boosted and taking care of one another.

Brian Lehrer: Well, code yellow comes with no return to more protective city policies like indoor public space, mask or vaccine mandates, the mask mandate on public transportation remains in effect, but no return to some of these other things. Given that low income people of color dominate districts like yours, essential workers dominate districts like yours as you were just saying and have been hardest hit by COVID. Do you see that less a fair policy as discriminatory by race or class?

Councilmember Farías: I do not. I have to be honest with you. I think speaking with neighbors every single day and week in my district, this is a new public norm and COVID is endemic. If we don't start shifting how we are discussing this in our communities, how we are prioritizing public health and new practices, and new ways to take care of not just yourself but your neighbor, and whether you think you wake up with allergies or you might have a cold or strep throat or COVID you should mask up. Not just for your own safety but for the folks around you.

I think it important for us to be more cognizant on our mass transit and public transit on whether or not we feel well and whether or not we should be masking. I do think those folks in communities like mine black and brown essential workers, people moving and feeding this city understand this and have been really acclimated towards best practices that I think all of us need to consider moving forward

Brian Lehrer: Encouraging those best practices not requiring them.

Councilmember Farías: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: We're asking all the council members what's the most common reason constituents contact your office since you took office in January, what would it be for you?

Councilmember Farías: Right now the most common areas of folks reaching out to the office are primarily on general welfare, local things like pot holes in our streets, lights, street lights being out, repaving, things like that are happening that they would really like to see a response to. I think more people on the road, more cars are on the road, we're getting different multimodal infrastructure coming in so people really want to see safer cleaner streets.

Brian Lehrer: Are those the things you would've predicted people would call your office about the most?

Councilmember Farías: Yes. Honestly I would. As someone that moves throughout the district both on the bus and in a car, and my brother typically is on a bicycle. Those are the main complaints I think I'm living with every single day, and so I know for sure my neighbors are experiencing them every day as well.

Brian Lehrer: The council member last week in a district next to yours said crime is the number one thing people are calling about this year. How's crime in your district compared to a year or two ago. It's obviously topic number one in the city for so many people.

Councilmember Farías: I would say comparing pandemic years of levels of crime to where we're trying to get back up and things are opening back up again, and people are getting back to a new norm is a little unfair, but I would say crime in my community is similar to pre-pandemic numbers. I think we really need to prioritize how do we provide people opportunities to get back to work, get back to new norms of what it looks like to share time in the community with events and opportunities to be outside with one another really providing ways for people to have resources that can lessen the crime in our areas.

Brian Lehrer: If you are saying that crime is similar to pre pandemic levels in your district, that would be different than a lot of other places because the citywide stats are the crime is way up from pre-pandemic levels.

Councilmember Farías: I think fortunate for me I would say that my community doesn't have any high skyrocketing numbers. I think we are seeing certain areas that are spiking, and I keep in constant contact with my local NCOs and my precinct just to be sure there's any other ways that I can be supplementing or supporting the community and our neighbors, but unfortunately the city has seen something different.

Brian Lehrer: I mentioned at the top that mayor Adams controversial anti-gun teams not in full NYPD uniforms have reportedly been making mostly traffic stops and mostly just making low level traffic busts from these stops and have recovered only three guns that way according to a New York post data analysis published yesterday. Is that consistent with how you see those teams behaving in your district if you know?

Councilmember Farías: To be honest with you I'm not quite sure if that's similar to or inconsistent with any of the members in my district. I will say that I proactively see our local Bronx precincts notifying folks publicly when they are doing these sorts of busts and getting illegal guns off of our streets. I think it's important for people to know that the precincts are working to do that.

Brian Lehrer: I'll tell our listeners a little behind the scenes thing about your appearance today, you were scheduled for this time and then a news conference was scheduled at the same time on something that you were going to be there to help announce. I guess it's something that you care about being discussed by city council. You decided to keep this appointment anyway, thank you on behalf of our listeners, but do you want to announce anything here that's being announced simultaneously at the press conference that you think is important?

Councilmember Farías: No, we were in direct response to what we found out last night. I think a lot of folks woke up angry and devastated this morning to know that potentially our constitutional rights will be taken away. I think it's good for everyone in New York city to know that New York will not not stand idly by when rights and the lives of women are threatened. Our speaker Adrian Adams and myself as as co-chair along with Councilmember Farah Louis who's Co-chair of the Women's Caucus are standing on city hall steps to demands that we will not go back.

Brian Lehrer: It was about Roe which you and I of course talked about at length earlier. You listed your top three priorities to my producer as job creation, worker protections, transit equity, and it's really four and food insecurity. Can you take us into the job creation part of that? I see you're involved with an effort in council to lower the hotel occupancy tax to help the tourism industry come back. Is that part of it or what do you see as job creation mission number one or numbers one and two for you?

Councilmember Farías: Yes. I think in terms of job creation/worker protections it's really important now as we're looking towards recovery, and high level of unemployment and market need to be able to directly respond to that as a municipality. We're living in a historic moment for workers where people do not want to work if they're not going to be properly compensated, have benefits, be able to have investments and be able to provide for their families. With that I think and coupled with the mayor also has shown us that it's very important for him that economic development is our main road to recovery.

I chair the committee on economic development and so I'm looking at this from the lens of the municipality, what do we own or we have that we can provide opportunity. That directly means local municipally titled and sector based jobs. We have an opportunity to say we have a dearth of employment in these titles or these sectors, we have our career and technical education high schools. We have unions that have curriculum and apprenticeship models that can be replicated or expanded in these municipal titles, and we have the budgetary allocations to prioritize getting people back to work in city jobs.

For me that means how do we work with our partners in labor to expand apprenticeships? How do we work and create public private partnerships to answer for that dearth of employment, and I think it's about preparing a new generation of workers to take over these vital jobs. We can't have what's been going on and exasperated by the pandemic continue on when we're focused on recovery. I really think we have an opportunity to lay the groundwork to the city's unemployment crisis with a municipal job guarantee if we can make the time and investment there.

In terms of hotels and bringing up the occupancy tax. I primarily have been working with the majority leader Keith Powers, to really think about what are other creative ways that we can ensure our neighbors and particularly, people that live in my district and in the Bronx, who are working in these hotels, who have been unemployed for many, many months, almost two years at this point, to really get back into those buildings or get back to work.

Cutting the tax by half, lowering it from its current form, I will be able to make sure my neighbors have good-paying union jobs, can open back up and get back to work. I think supporting workers and supporting businesses are not two separate things, but they're both really rely on one another to be able to help towards our economic recovery.

Brian Lehrer: Amanda Farías, city council member from District 18 in the South Bronx, the latest guest in our series 51 council members in 52 weeks. Council member, thank you very much. We look forward to continuing to talk to you during your time.

Councilmember Farías: Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.

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