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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer, WNYC. Here's a political riddle. New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and some other prominent progressives want you to vote for Joe Biden for president, but not vote for the Democrat. How is that possible? Should I say it again? New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and some other prominent progressives want you to vote for Joe Biden for president, but not vote for the Democrat. How is that possible?

Well, the New York City Public Advocate, Jumaane Williams joins us now to answer that question and more as election season, I can't say Election Day is 15 days away. I do say election season continues for 15 more days. Public Advocate, it's always a pleasure to have you on. Welcome back to WNYC.

Jumaane Williams: Same here, thank you. Peace and blessings to everyone. I appreciate it.

Brian: Would you like to solve that riddle for our listeners?

Jumaane: Absolutely. They can vote for Biden-Harris on the Working Families Party line, which is what I actually plan on doing. There's a big push for those who won't know to try to make sure the Working Families Party line stays alive. I'll just be honest, the governor did his best to try to get rid of them as a party, and they're pushing back. Your vote counts just as much on Democratic Party line as it does for Working Families Party line. I think Working Families Party does for the Democratic Party, what WFP tries to do for journalism. My hope is everybody will do what they can to make sure we're keeping the main parties honest without having parties like WFP around.

Brian: When you say you want people to do that, I saw your tweet the other day that said by voting Biden on the Working Families Party line it offers more opportunity to hold him accountable to do good things if he's elected. How would that work?

Jumaane: Well, I have been particularly honest. I think that we are where we are right now, not just because of the Republican Party, but the Democratic Party, in fact, has played the same incumbency protection games as everyone else. I am not the biggest fan of the selection that was made to run against the current president, but there is an existential threat, which is Donald Trump and so we should get rid of him now and then begin to hold Biden-Harris and the party accountable on January 20th. That's mission number one and the mission number two.

I do believe that the party should not take people's vote for granted, but that was a mini jump out of the frying pan going into the fire. The WFP is a place where people can go, who really believe in ideals of working folks. Of folks who have been left in the margins, to make sure everyone has a piece of the equity pie. That's what the Working Families Party stands for. That's why a lot of the mainstream Democrats like the governor feel threatened by it and they had to dare to challenge. The governor, he in turn decided that he would try to get rid of them by raising the threshold of which people need to vote on their line for elections like this. We're just hoping folks do what they need to do to get rid of this president, but do it in the Working Families Party line.

Brian: Public Advocate, have you voted yet yourself?

Jumaane: My plan to vote on the first day of early voting, but we are asking folks to please make a plan. We don’t want to confuse voter fraud with voter suppression, which happens both in the south and north, of course. I believe once you can get past all of the issues to vote and actually cast your vote, your vote is going to be in a very safe place and is going to count. Whether it is doing it by mail, or early voting, which is what I'm recommending, it's about getting your vote in while decreasing the pressure on the system that could occur on November 3rd. From October 24th to November 1st, if you can and able and you're comfortable, you should go in-person and vote early.

Brian: I have a friend who lives in the city but is working for six months in Maine and decided to drive all the way back here to vote in-person when early voting begins on Saturday, and then drive all the way back to Maine to make sure their vote counts, in other words, not trusting the absentee ballot enough. Do you recommend voting in-person too for that reason?

Jumaane: I firmly believe, however, someone votes, once they can get it cast, it is going to count. I understand why there are more concerns about the absentee ballots and what happened in Brooklyn didn't help that. We are, believe it or not, in better shape than we were in even the last election this year in terms of the BOE, even though of course, there are a lot of things we have to address after November 3rd. I would recommend make a plan to vote. If you're not comfortable and you want to vote absentee, just get your absentee ballot in time, and that time is closing shortly, but I'm going to be voting in-person. That's how I'm comfortable with. I'm asking everybody if you can, I think the number one way is if you can vote from October 24th to November 1st, that's the best way to do it. If you can’t and you’re feeling comfortable coming in-person, do the absentee.

Brian: I think the Russians are sending around letters that say start voting on November 24th, but that's another one.

Jumaane: [laughs]

Brian: My guest is New York City Public Advocate, Jumaane Williams, Brian Lehrer with you on WNYC. On the coronavirus, Public Advocate, we've had those hotspots in Brooklyn and Queens, of course, but Governor Cuomo announced yesterday that the test positivity rates have been declining in those neighborhoods even as the rates are going up around the country. The governor said he'll announce on Wednesday whether he can lift some of the temporary restrictions that he recently imposed. What's your take on how the city and state are handling the hotspots?

Jumaane: I believe the main problem right now is the governor and the mayor too often have this toxic machismo that doesn't get them on the same page as quickly as everyone needs them. We get confusing messages and that's not helpful. We should be able to put out plans and contingencies that people understand if this happens, and that happens and then it can be adjusted.

What we saw in ballpark and other places was that combined with the fact that there was no community engagement at all. We knew that the holidays are coming up and so that's a recipe for disaster in any community. At the same time, the community leaders themselves do have a responsibility. You can't try to plan to have a 10,000-person wedding in Williamsburg. That's just reckless regard. I'm glad to say they’re stepping in there. What we saw before, a couple weeks ago was confusion that didn't need to be.

I liked the idea of the micro heights hotspots. Of course, there was little craziness going on with the different maps but once we can get that finalized, I think it's a good idea. What the governor and mayor need to do now is just get on the same page.

Brian: You were an advocate for taking the schools all remote for this semester and also doing much better at offering quality remote learning. Can we talk about each of those? First, the mayor says the positivity rates in public schools are very low and studies around the country seem to be showing pre-K through 12 education is not where the virus is spreading very much at all, vindicating, the mayor says his hybrid approach, so families at least have a choice. I'm curious if you're changing your tune on that.

Jumaane: Well, Dr. Fauci says that we don't have enough of the data yet, although there’re often data [unintelligible 00:08:06] recently. Two, I am glad to be wrong on the virus not increasing in the schools in the city. I hope to continue to be wrong, and I told the Mayor himself, I hope I've never been more wrong about something in my life. At the same time, it was still a risk we didn't have to take spending money we didn't have and that wasn't the only thing. We've seen massive failures in trying to reopen the larger system and in the entire country, and we just didn't need it to happen.

Even the mayor's own hybrid approach, remote learning wasn’t going to be a component and we failed there. What we should have done and can still do is spend all of this energy and time to make sure we have the best remote system in place, and we didn't do that. What we see is a high amount of students up with 70-something thousand that still don't have the hardware or the internet access that are needed. What we see in schools that are over 50% Black or brown, the attendance rate is eight times worse than in the schools that aren't. What we see in-person learning happening mostly in white wealthy neighborhoods, and in poor Black and brown communities, it's not. This is a system that the mayor has set up and has exacerbated, and we could not have done worse in trying to get this way.

Brian: Do you know what the obstacle is to just getting the iPads or laptops to every family that doesn't already have one? I heard that same stuff that you just cited, reported this weekend around 70,000 students. That's outrageous, considering that they've been at it since March. Do you as the Public Advocate know what the obstacles are?

Jumaane: It's outrageous, I believe it's even 77,000 closer to 80,000. We're trying to get answers to that, and I salute Education Chair Mark Treyger who has been a stalwart on this. In addition, we just got the data on attendance rates that we’ve been asking for, for months. I have found, and I'm sorry to say, in a lot of these things, the mayor is an obstacle here. I can't say for the specifics but if we have focused on remote learning like we should have, we would have had money, time and energy, and resources to get it done.

When I look at what's happened in the NYPD, and human rights administration, and human resources administration, and the Department of Education, the common denominator there is Mayor Bill de Blasio. I'm at a loss for words for the decisions that he makes based on the tools that we have available. I'm only counting on the tools that we have and often we’re choosing the worst tool for what we have, for the choices we have to make.

Brian: I know. He's been criticized a lot for being so interested in getting schools open as an option for families, which might be a good goal that he has not focused enough on getting remote learning to be as high quality as it could be for those who choose that, which at this point is the majority of the students. You’ve been focusing on quality remote learning, right?

Jumaane: Absolutely and the very people that he said who needed the schools open the most are the exact people who are faring the worst. It's beyond me why he couldn't see that then and doesn't seem to see it now.

Brian: If the coronavirus does surge again, we know how disparate the impact was the first time by race and class. That's a little of what you were getting out there with the education piece, but beyond that, in terms of even life and death, are there steps to advocating to minimize the disparity if there is a second wave?

Brian: Some of the things that we-- and we're actually going to be putting out a white paper very soon on the second wave when we still need to see clear and decisive decisions both from the mayor and the governor. If the governor is going to have these broad executive powers that no one has ever seen before, they’ve asked for it, the messages need to be clear and to be concise, and we should have planned out beforehand that people can respond to. Businesses should have plans that people can respond to so that we can adjust them as we move forward.

The areas like NYCHA should be buttressed right now with infrastructure. We just got to NYCHA about six weeks in. Again, we should have our remote learning in place and stronger. I like the idea of trying to get to the hotspots first but we should be prepared if we need to close it down on a larger scale a lot sooner than we did, a lot clearer than we did and with the message on point. My hope is that we've learned from what happened in the beginning of this pandemic, but too often, we're not even seeing folks admitting there were mistakes made and so that does concern me.

Brian: New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams. Thank you very much for keeping your eye on all of these issues and for coming on periodically to talk about them with us. Thank you so much.

Jumaane: Thanks so much and thank you for creating the space to do so.

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