Laurie Cumbo

Laurie Angela Cumbo is an Democratic New York City Council woman for the 35th district, representing the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Clinton Hill, Fort Greene, Crown Heights, and Prospect Heights.

Elected in 2013 in a crowded Democratic primary race, Cumbo, unchallenged by a Republican candidate, succeeded Letitia James; she was handpicked to run by Brooklyn Congressman Hakeem Jeffries. Cumbo's political leanings are in some ways more conservative than that her predecessor, and she was the subject of controversy prior to her taking office.

Early life and education

Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, she graduated from Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia in 1997, receiving a degree in Fine Arts. She received a Master's degreee in Visual Arts Administration from New York University in 1999.

Museum career

Based on her 1999 NYU graduate work and a trip to Bilbao, Spain, Cumbo founded and served as the executive director of the Museum of Contemporary African Diaspora Arts (MoCADA). She told the New York Times's Local, "prior to [receiving her master's in 1999] I would say I was very inspired by the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. This museum created a whole economy for this particular city after its shipping industry died. It made Bilbao and the museum a must destination when visiting Spain. I know that MoCADA can do that for Brooklyn as well." Originally based in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, the museum moved to its current location in Brooklyn's gentrified Fort Greene section within the BAM Cultural District with the help of the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Local Development Corporation, which included Bruce Ratner, the Barclays Center and Atlantic Yards developer, on its board.

In 2012, the museum landed a $100,000 grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to pay for a two-year program that brought monthly concerts to public spaces in NYCHA Houses like Walt Whitman, Ingersoll, and Farragut in Fort Greene that drew crowds up to 500 or 600. The following year in 2013, MoCADA launched another art performance series, Soul of Brooklyn, which is "a series of block-party style arts events meant to bring the community together and promote local businesses." From 2001 to 2011, Cumbo served as a graduate professor in the Arts and Cultural Management program at Pratt Institute's School of Art & Design.

Political career

2013 city council election

She moved into the 35th council district to run for its city council seat. By the end of August 2013, Cumbo's political campaign had received at least $80,000 from Jobs for New York PAC, a pro-development political action committee unpopular in an already rapidly gentrifying area. In an AARP-sponsored discussion a week later she claimed that she received no money from the Real Estate Board of New York (backers of Jobs for New York), and that they have given no contributions to her campaign. She denied it again when confronted with the issue at a Brooklyn community board committee meeting in February 2015.

Cumbo had previously denounced the practice and encouraged voters to blow the whistle on excessive corporate support of political campaigns during her campaign. She did not appear at the public debate before the primary election for the council district seat on August 21, 2013. Despite this, she won the council seat in a crowded race on a platform, in part, of expanding and developing arts and cultural tourism in the district and making improved use of public spaces including parks. Her platform also included "Investing in Economic Development, Strengthening Not-for-Profits and Service Employees, Reforming Education." She had also been handpicked to run by Brooklyn Congressman Hakeem Jeffries and endorsed by New York State Assemblyman Walter Mosley, from which a plethora of endorsements followed, including from the Working Families Party, co-founded by Bill de Blasio.

First council term

Legislation

Cumbo took office in January 2014. She was appointed chair of the Women's Issues Committee and also serves on the following committees: Cultural Affairs, Libraries, and International Intergroup Relations; Finance; Higher Education; Public Housing; and Youth Services. She is also a member of the Women’s Caucus; the Black, Latino, and Asian Caucus; and the Jewish Caucus. She is specifically passionate about women’s issues such as domestic violence, workplace discrimination, girls education, and sex trafficking.

In her first six months in government, when city council members were working on the FY 2015 Budget, she and Council Member Ritchie Torres, chair of the Public Housing Committee, along with many residents advocated to stop 57 NYCHA community and senior centers from experiencing cuts in funding. As a result, the Council allocated $17 million to keep these centers open. Cumbo also “helped secure” $4 million in funding for The Coalition of Theatres of Color (CTC), a historical group of the twelve of the most senior multicultural theatrical and cultural institutions in New York.

Mayor de Blasio signed Intro 187-A into law on September 30, 2014, which calls for “further insight into and reporting of the graduation rates of youth in the foster care” system by requiring the Commissioner of Administration for Children’s Services to submit an annual report to the City Council reflecting the number of youth in foster care that graduated high school in the previous year. Cumbo stated, “Intro 187-A, my first piece of legislation, demonstrates our collective commitment to education and the success of all youth in foster care… we need to know that these youth are well-equipped to become self-sufficient adults.” This piece of legislation with help the nearly 11,000 children in foster care as of July 2014.

Early in October, Cumbo, as chair of the Women's Issues Committee, and her colleague Vanessa L. Gibson, chair of the Public Safety Issues Committee, announced the council allocated nearly $6 million to support domestic violence programs and initiatives: CONNECT, Inc. Community Empowerment Program – $600,000; Domestic Violence and Empowerment (DoVE) Initiative – $4 million; Immigrant Battered Women’s Initiative – $1 million; and HRA Legal Services for Domestic Violence Victims – $350,000. On October 15, 2014, Cumbo joined by Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, Rosemonde Pierre-Louis, commissioner for the Mayor’s Office to Combat Domestic Violence and other citywide elected officials, posted at subway stations across the city in a campaign that Cumbo organized in order to raise awareness around the problem of Domestic Violence Awareness Month in honor of "NYC Go Purple Visibility Day". Her and her office partnered with the "Not on My Watch!" campaign back in June 2014.

Other positions

She expressed support for Mayor Bill de Blasio's Vision Zero campaign by reminding her constituents that Eastern Parkway's speed limit is 25 MPH as of June 2014 in order to help reduce the amount of fatal traffic accidents. She is also a strong advocate for the Boss Bill which aims at strengthening current workplace discrimination laws to protect employees across the state, especially women, from experiencing employer retaliation against the personal use of reproductive health care and services.

She was also in strong support of hosting the 2016 Democratic National Convention in New York City, specifically Brooklyn, which failed. In arguing in favor of the convention coming to her borough, she argued “We have swag on lock down,” continuing, “A convention anywhere else in the United States of America is just going to be ‘eh.'”

Controversies

Antisemitism

In December 2013, one month before Cumbo was sworn in, a series of attacks took place targeting Jewish residents of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, totaling at least eight victims including children. The attacks in were alleged to be part of a trend of "knockout attacks", and antisemitism was cited by a number of community leaders, politicians and media outlets as a precipitating factor in the attacks. Following the attacks, Cumbo publically expressed that her African American and Caribbean constituents had expressed fear of being “pushed out of their homes by Jewish landlords”, and that resentment towards the Jewish residents of Crown Heights "offer possible insight as to how young African-American/Caribbean teens could conceivably commit a 'hate crime' against a community that they know very little about." She wrote "I admire the Jewish community immensely.... I respect and appreciate the Jewish community’s family values and unity that has led to strong political, economic and cultural gains. While I personally regard this level of tenacity, I also recognize that for others, the accomplishments of the Jewish community triggers feelings of resentment, and a sense that Jewish success is not also their success." Her response was covered widely on blogs and in the New York press.

Cumbo's statements raised concerns among many residents, and in addition to the local mainstream media, the story was featured in local Jewish media outlets. Cumbo later apologized to her constituents for her remarks, saying in a statement, “I sincerely apologize to all of my constituents for any pain that I have caused by what I wrote … and I understand now that my words did not convey what was in my heart, which is a profound desire to bring our diverse communities closer together.” The next year she allocated thousands of dollars in district council money to a Crown Heights Orthodox Jewish community group.

Earlier, in April 2010, while head of MoCADA, she was quoted in the New York Times's Local with another remark regarding Jews. She said, "I’m trying to figure out new ways to do what I want to do to grow the museum.... You have a Jewish children’s museum, but you don’t feel that there should be a black-centered museum?"

Favoritism

In 2014, she designated $1.4 million, her largest capital budget allocation, to MoCADA, the arts organization which she founded and directed before winning a position on city council. This was matched by the same amount of money in the city’s executive budget for the 2015 fiscal year. While technically not illegal, with council members routinely funding organizations with which they maintain personal ties, Capital New York noted, her support for the museum is "notable chiefly for the sizable, seven-figure contribution, and for her personal closeness to the recipient organization." The political blog reported that for most city council members, "the allocations reported on their conflict-of-interest forms were a fraction of the one to MoCADA." The executive director of Citizens Union, a nonpartisan government watchdog group, said the action “raises questions about why she alone would fund an organization that she founded....It smacks of showing favoritism, in a way that almost crosses the line."

Housing by race

She made headlines again in late March 2015 when she asked why there were “blocs” (possibly "blocks") of Asians living in two Fort Greene housing projects. Colleague and Manhattan councilwoman Margaret Chin, who is Chinese-American, said "She certainly could’ve chosen her words a bit more carefully. The fact is that there are many Asian-American families . . . who have applied to live in public housing.” Cumbo issued an apology, but then said she only wanted to know if the NYCHA “uses a cultural preference priority component” in picking tenants to which NYCHA chair Shola Olatoye replied that it did not, saying its vacancy rate is less than 1 percent, making such an influx almost impossible. The Brooklyn councilwoman then told the New York Post, “There could be some benefit to housing people by culture . . . I think it needs to be discussed.” Queens Congresswoman Grace Meng, also Asian-American, denounced Cumbo's idea, saying that it was "thinly disguised segregation based on race, color, creed or national origin.” City council speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito while defending Cumbo called her comments "unfortunate."

External links

• Official 2013 campaign website