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Brian Lehrer: It the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Carlos Menchaca, the city councilman from Sunset Park, Brooklyn, is our next guest. We're going to talk about a few things. We'll get some of his DNC thoughts, and some of the things the President is raising like urban crime not being discussed by the Democrats last night for a Councilman from Brooklyn, but also we talked about Sunset Park last week on the show in terms of it having a spike in COVID cases.

Maybe some of you noticed over the weekend Governor Cuomo was very proud of the state having just a 0.7% positivity rate. In other words, of all the people taking COVID tests in the last few days before the weekend, only 7/10 of 1% of them came back positive a 0.7% COVID positivity rate. Well, the mayor's test and trace corps leader Ted Long told us on the program last week that Sunset Park has a 7% positivity rate, so that's 10 times the rate in the state as a whole.

Another issue for Sunset Park developers are pursuing a zoning change that you may know about in the area known as Industry City, in an effort to build more shopping space and offices. Yes, people will go shopping again someday, and we'll go to offices again someday. They say that could create 20,000 jobs, but Councilman Menchaca says no, this is going to create too much gentrification. This is a new dynamic because, typically, a member of city council from whatever the neighborhood in question is gets a veto over a rezoning proposal for a development project.

In this case, Menchaca is saying no, but a lot of other members are pushing back. Richie Torres from the Bronx was on this show recently pushing back and saying, wait, this isn't just about what happens in your neighborhood. This is about 20,000 jobs that we really need for people all over the city who would commute over there. We're going to talk about all these things now with City Council Member Carlos Menchaca from Sunset Park and thereabouts. Councilman, welcome back to WNYC. It's great to have you today.

Carlos Menchaca: Buenos dias, Brian, really great to be with you. I have to first say I was listening to Paige talking about her vote, and what that meant to her.

Brian: For people who just joined us, for people who didn't hear that call, the last caller before the news who was undecided between voting for Joe Biden and not voting because the Biden house ticket isn't that progressive as she sees it, so you want to respond to that caller?

Carlos: I have to. I think what Paige is feeling is what a lot of us are feeling and this disconnect between this national party and what it means for us on the ground everyday life. I think that what I'm going to talk about in Sunset Park with COVID and Industry City is about trust. I think these are voters who just do not trust that their vote is actually going to have an impact in their day to day life, and I just heard that very, very clearly. This wasn't about anything other than her relationship with government, and that she's felt like they failed her. I think that's just something that is embedded in so much of what we're going to talk about in Sunset Park.

Brian: I think that's the basis on which you originally got elected to City Council. It was 2013, if I remember correctly.

Carlos: Yes. Fighting big development voices. Rebney had put this big PAC out that Jamestown, the owners of Industry City, were a big investor in that fought a lot of against a lot of us who were going to be progressive voices in the City Council. This was, or I should say that that was the backdrop for 2013.

Brian: Good. I want to come back to Industry City, but let's stay on the Democratic Convention for a moment. As I mentioned in the earlier hour, I was watching some Fox News, as well as other things, of course, but I was cruising around after the convention speeches to see what the various reactions were. The big thing they were emphasizing on Fox was that the Democrats didn't even mention the spike in crime in New York and other cities or some of the political violence. That's been very limited, but they mentioned things going on in Portland and Seattle as well as a little bit in New York in the early days of the protest season. On the crime, how is it in your district? We know it's going up by multiples in the city, from what it was in recent years, in terms of shootings and murders. How is it in your district, and do you think it needs a Democratic Party response?

Carlos: I think it needs a government response. What that tells me is that we are in a lack of innovation and imagination to rethink public safety. I think you saw that during the budget vote. You had a predominantly Democrat City Council that couldn't really get to a point we were really talking about what the community has been wanting us to do. The folks that are protesting nationwide are asking government, Democrats or Republicans, to reshape, rethink, reimagine and to act on a new public policy for public safety. I think that's why you're not seeing it in the Democratic Convention right now.

Hopefully it'll come later, but it's not the first thing that comes out, even though we've been a city by city, protesting daily protests are still happening. In Red Hook and Sunset Park, a lot of young people are leading the voice. Those are the voices that I really bet in myself in the budget conversation to hear from them and young people, I think, are imagining a new way that removes police from public safety because they don't believe that more police equal more public safety.

Brian: I heard an activist on another show yesterday on NPR making a similar point, which was kind of we want to reimagine public safety, but when there's a spike in crime or any immediate crime, no matter at what level, and it always gets used as an excuse not to make change now because we need to fight the crime that's existing right now. So we can't do big structural changes because that's going to allow some people to get killed or otherwise shot or robbed or whatever and that that gets used as an excuse to not make structural change.

That was the argument of that activist. What about the other side of that? If you're imagining, and I think I heard you say really go so far as imagining public safety without the police, correct me if I misheard that, then what do you do about here today? We know how many shootings there were in New York over the weekend, over last weekend and it's so much different than 2019.

Carlos: What I didn't say was no police even though I think that's where we should go. What I'm saying right now is less investment in a police force at the tune of $6 billion. That's what I'm talking about. When we talk about less investment in the police, we're also talking about more investment in communities who are vulnerable, vulnerable to a lot of things, food, healthcare, crime. We don't have to go far in the city to find crisis management response systems that have really hit crime head-on with local community relationships.

That's something else I think that in your show you might have spoken to, but that's direct investment to organizations who have relationship with folks that after shooting go out and really engage each other, and understand where that crime, where that agitation, that tension is, and solve it working with community. That's not what this administration has done. We put in a lot of investment in police enforcement, and that's not working. To your point what do we do? We just put more armed men and women into our communities. I think that's what we're trying to say is no, we can do something differently.

Why? Because our budgets are decreasing. We had a massive decrease in tax revenue. Right now we have to rethink values in our policy and the value that I'm trying to talk about when we talk about public safety, economic development or COVID response, is community trust and really bringing community to the table so that they can be decision makers in our communities. It's pretty profound, but it's a lot of work. It's a lot of work. This is why people shy away from it.

Brian: Let's talk about COVID response and, listeners, if you're just joining us, my guest is Sunset Park City Council Member Carlos Menchaca. If the numbers we're being given are true, Sunset Park has a positivity rate 10 times New York state as a whole, 7% positivity rate. Whereas for the state as a whole, it's under 1% of the tests being taken come back positive. How do you see what's going on in Sunset Park, and what is the best that government can do to respond to it?

Carlos: Well, Brian, everyone should be concerned about what's happening in Sunset Park, that those numbers are not just bad for the city, but really, I think, beyond the response, and this response has been robust. We're looking at new testing sites in the district where people can do same-day results, and those are in transportation to those sites. This is all good.

But I think what I want the listeners to really think about is not just the response that government can provide, like the tests, is how we got here. I think there's some real conditions about how could a community like Sunset Park get to a place where has 7% positive response rates. What you have to do is look at who Sunset Park is. This is an immigrant working families community. Many barriers to language and technology, they're rent-burdened. We just crossed the August 1st deadline, people are rent-burdened, and they're terrified of getting evicted. People are going hungry. But what you also have are incredible responses from the community through mutual aid.

There's been an immense amount of ability for neighbors to help neighbors. This is not new to Sunset Park into many communities. But this is all without government. This is all without government support. There's only so much a neighborhood can do to really impact a pandemic response. I think what the Mayor, and I keep on hearing him talk about we have the tools, and the basic and most important tool that he doesn't have is trust. Inside all the things that this administration has done to communities like mine, historically disinvesting in them. Only when the community participates, do we get resources like new schools, for example, in our communities in our schools that are overpopulated.

Those are the moments that really point to this last point that I want to make, which is engagement. When communities can engage meaningfully with resources and tools to understand their world and their power, everything changes. That's when communities connect to government, trust government, and that's participatory budgeting. You and I have spoken about participatory budgeting in the past. You have people in the community who are walking around understanding how the capital budget works, and how it can work for them to make change in their schools and their parks, that's--

[crosstalk]

Brian: Some people may be listening right now and thinking, "Wait, there's a life and death Coronavirus fight going on in your neighborhood, and you're talking about participatory budgeting."

Carlos: Yes, because the thing that that Paige who's saying, "I don't want to get my vote to someone," is the same feeling that someone, is saying, "I'm not going to go get tested," is the same feeling that says there are still ICE raids happening in Sunset Park just yesterday, Brian. We had an ICE sighting in Sunset Park. These are the things that chip away at government. If we can't retool and bring in the value of engagement, true engagement that's resourced, so people understand their role in government, none of this stuff is going to work.

Brian: You want to tell us more about that ICE raid? Has this been reported?

Carlos: This has been reported. I think we're still trying to find out more information about exactly what the actual engagement was. ICE routinely goes back to homes that they weren't able to apprehend the person that they're looking for. So they'll often go back. Sunset Park, historically, has been a hotspot for ICE. Because of the know your rights work that we've done, people know their rights. They will not open doors. But those are the same doors that get knocked on for the census. Those are the same doors that will get knocked on by COVID responses.

When we're talking about participatory budgeting, that's just an example of what we're trying to do here in Sunset Park that transforms how communities engage and actually bring in those tools to change their lives. It can be transformative, and that's the connection that I'm trying to make here with you and with all the topics that we just talked about.

Brian: Boom, those are the same doors that get knocked on by census takers. Those are the same doors they get knocked on by COVID contact tracers. In his daily briefing yesterday Mayor de Blasio addressed the uptick in Sunset Park to reporters in a way that surprised me. You tell me if it surprised you.

Mayor de Blasio: We do not see a cluster situation at this point in Sunset Park, based on the information we’ve gleaned over the last few days from this intensive testing. We do see individual households with specific problems.

Brian: Do you agree with that distinction and does that distinction matter? That he doesn't see a cluster, using that word, as opposed to individual households with specific problems leading to that 7% positivity rate.

Carlos: I'm less concerned about the difference in this. We have a spike and we need to resource communities with better ways to engage. I think what we haven't talked about is this language issue, that for a long time now, we've been asking the administration to rethink how it communicates to communities. Whether it's a cluster or one family, they're still in Sunset Park. They're in Sunset Park, they are probably immigrant working families that have probably lost their jobs, that are rent-burdened, and that are hungry.

It doesn't matter if it's a cluster. Again, I'm not a public health official here, but what I am is a representative of a community that needs attention. Not just attention from the city that can come on down, but really come in and support the grassroots. There's a lot of strong bonds in Sunset Park, and that needs to be fueled with resources. That's what I'm talking about. Whether it's a cluster or one family, I think he's missing the point.

Brian: I think when we talk about cluster, it's sometimes that there was a big group of people together, and that's a cluster, as opposed to individual households with these underlying socioeconomic realities that you've been describing. I did see that there were two raves in Sunset Park on Sunday, with almost 300 people busted by the NYPD. I'm seeing the term busted in my copy. I don't know if that means they were actually arrested or if they just broke up a party. What would you say about that, if anything?

Carlos: Those are the things that we can't have more of. What I think is important here is that people are missing the communication. This is back to the lack of the penetration of this information. I'm not particularly knowledgeable about how this party happened, but I know that parties are probably happening all over the city. What I think is really important is that, and I'm thinking about things like PPE in the hands of people who need it, masks and anything that they need like hand sanitizer, our office with our local communities walk around talking to businesses.

We have boxes of PPE. Those things go so fast. People don't have it. People are needing that here in Sunset Park. That's a way to really engage folks about the seriousness of what we have right now. If people are walking around and seeing no masks, I think that's problematic. Those are the things that we're focused on, and that's where you get a difference in approach. We see the need and we want to meet that need, but that need is defined by community. That's what we're trying to do here, to get a hold on this.

Brian: Sunset Park City Councilman Carlos Menchaca, with us for another few minutes. Let's go to the big controversy over rezoning the area known as Industry City, where there's a development proposal that they say could bring in 20,000 jobs. You're opposed to it largely out of gentrification concerns. I'm going to play the pushback clip first in this case. What's different here, as I was explaining to listeners at the beginning of the segment, but I'll say it again for people just joining, usually, when there's a development proposal anywhere in the city, the local City Council Member gets a veto.

If that City Council Member says, "No, the rezoning does not go forward as presumably not in the community's interest." In this case, our guest, Councilman Menchaca has said no to this Industry City rezoning, but a lot of other members of City Council are considering approving it anyway, which they have the right to do if they vote in the majority and not deferring because so many jobs could potentially be available at a time of economic crisis. Here, for example, is City Council Member Ritchie Torres from the Bronx. He's on his way to Congress now, after winning the Democratic primary but still a member of City Council of Ritchie Torres from the Bronx on this show two weeks ago.

Ritchie Torres: When you have a project like Industry City that would create 20,000 jobs that would generate $100 million a year in revenue, that is too massive a project to leave to the discretion of one member. We are a city council of 51 members, not one member, and all 51 members should have a role in carefully considering the merits of a project as massive as Amazon or the expansion of Industry City. Whatever we might decide, we all should be engaged in the deliberative process of the City Council.

Brian: Councilman, your response.

Carlos: I couldn't agree with him more on the engagement part. Ritchie said that they need to engage. These members, Ritchie is not the only one, you have Donovan and Robert Cornegy in Brooklyn, who have come out so vociferous in their support have yet to enter the district and ask me to walk them through the work that we have done. I think his entire premise is really a page out of this corporate playbook. They get to reap the benefits of campaign allocations, and get to spew this-- I think it's not only disrespectful of me as a council member and their colleague, but of the community that's been doing a lot of work.

Let's talk about that work. That work has had so many different shapes and sizes, all pre-EULAR, I want to say. 10 town halls. I had a big presentation that I talked about living conditions, about how I fought a massive project like this, 5 million square feet of property, could become something that I just don't see in any of the mayoral rezonings or some of these larger private rezonings like Hudson Yards, Atlantic Yards and that's about accountability. That's the one thing that our community is afraid of. How do we hold a developer accountable? The question for me was, or I should say the conditions for me were we give conditions to the applicant.

We give conditions to the city of New York, with investments that never materialized. We also bring conditions back to the community so that the community can actually hold the developer accountable and the city accountable beyond the council. This council is going to be making a big decision about the future of Sunset Park, and that has failed. Those conditions were not met. I saw that and that's why I said no.

Brian: Maria, in Sunset Park, you are on WNYC with Council Member Carlos Menchaca. Hi, Maria. Maria, are you there? Maria, once. Maria, twice. Let's try John in Sunset Park. John, do we have you?

John: Yes. Hi, Brian.

Brian: Hi, there.

John: Hi, and hi, Councilman Menchaca.

Carlos: Hi, John.

John: Hi, this is a followup on the COVID issue. I listened to the show Thursday and thought, well, I need to get out and go get tested. But in half an hour he never said where to go get tested or how to find out where. I went online and I found through nyc.gov, two different sites that had two different sets of information. The one that was listed, the one space that was in Sunset Park was at the corner of 44th Street and 6th Avenue, which is actually the bottom part of Sunset Park.

I went, and I stood in the rain for three hours, waiting to get tested. Everybody was very nice, but they didn't tell me that there was this other center, over at the Army Terminal, I think. I'd been there for three hours and this guy bikes up and said, "Hey, all you guys that are waiting in line, if you go over here, I did it in 15 minutes."

Carlos: John, I'll respond and say that there's a couple issues there. There's communication, and access to the sites as a community member. I think that what that presents to us as an opportunity to ensure that the city is making sure that you get the information not just on Sunset Park on 44th Street and 6th Avenue, but at the Brooklyn Army Terminal. We are doing a lot more work to work with the administration to get these sites out. There are more testing sites in Sunset Park, including the Maimonides Breast Cancer Center, City MD Urgent Care, NYU Langone over on 55th street, H and H is doing the Brooklyn Army Terminal. What we can do is make sure that we get this out to everybody so that you can get tested. But I think this is part of the tripping through real community engagement. How did you find out the first time? It was just through WNYC?

John: The site I went to was listed on the H and H because it was specifically the test and trace program.

Carlos: But it was after the Thursday.

Brian: Yes, it was after our show with the head of the test and trace corps Dr. Ted long. I know that we were talking about various places that people could get tested. People on that show were calling up and complaining about the waiting time, both for tests, but primarily for test results to come back many, many days. He was saying the Health and Hospitals Corporation sites had shorter lines and shorter turnaround times.

Carlos: We need to solve that. John, thank you for letting me know this. I'll make sure when we talk to the admin and their tracing corps team, that we can figure out how to get that information out and actually increase the number of places where you can get tested. Have you gotten tested yet?

Brian: John, did you succeed in getting tested?

John: I did. But, unfortunately, the response time was also an issue. I remember Mr. Long saying to one of the caller who'd had a long delay, he said, "Well, come take me up on it. I promise it won't be all these days before you get a result." I still haven't heard a result. I was tested Thursday afternoon.

Brian: Here we are on Tuesday. We had other callers that day at the end of that segment who we didn't have time to put on, but after he had said that saying, "No, no, I went to a Health and Hospitals Corporation site and I still had to wait a whole bunch of days." We're going to talk more about COVID in our next segment and we're running out of time, Councilman. Any last thing that you want to say about that to John or anything else?

Carlos: No. John, thank you for calling. I hope that you can call our office if you have any other issues. We're here and open.

Brian: By the way, my producer just wrote me a note that says her cousin was tested at a Health and Hospital site yesterday and got results today, 24 hours. It almost seems like it's totally random.

Carlos: Doesn't this break the concept of trust? This is the one tool. This is the one tool that the city just does not get right. It's a real crisis.

Brian: City Councilman from Sunset Park, Carlos Menchaca. We always--

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