A New Era Begins!

By Arthur Z. Schwartz

BELLA ABZUG.

BRAD LANDER. Photo credit: Streets PAC

The first Congressmember that I remember interacting with was the Congressmember who represented Greenwich Village. Her district ran all the way up the West Side up to Columbia University where I was a student. She lived on Bank Street. She wore a hat. And she was standing in front of 2000 chanting students at the Barnard College student center, on a chair. She was using a bullhorn. I remember her words: “Richard Nixon is a war criminal. What he is doing at Haiphong Harbor [the harbor for Hanoi] is a war crime!. There is only one answer you students should give. Strike!”

Her name was Bella Abzug. And on June 23rd she was smiling up in heaven. Brad Lander was elected Congressmember for Bank Street – and the rest of the new 10th Congressional District.

I have been Democratic District Leader for Greenwich Village for most of 31 years. From my election in 1995 until 2022, when the Village was redistricted into the new 10th Congressional District, and lumped with Lower Manhattan, Brooklyn Heights, Park Slope, and Sunset Park, we had two Congress Members, Jerry Nadler on the West and Carolyn Maloney on the east. Both were liberal stalwarts. Jerry was a founder of the Progressive Caucus, and a fervent civil libertarian, and Carolyn picked up where Bella left off as one of only 47 women in the House. (When Bella was elected there were 12. There are now 154).

In 2022 Dan Goldman was elected with 24% of the vote in a 10 person race. He spent $7 million to get elected, and he had an outside PAC smear his main opponent, Yuh Line Niou, with some of the most disgusting negative literature I have ever seen. In these pages I have never hidden my distaste for Goldman, the richest member of Congress. But I am going to heed the recent text message from Brad Lander, who beat Goldman 60%-40% in the June 24th primary, and not speak any more ill of Goldman; may his political career rest in peace.

Who Is Congressmember-To-Be Brad Lander?

Brad Lander will be 57 when he takes office (his birthday is July 6 – Happy Birthday Brad!). I say it’s a new era because, my admiration of Jerry and Carolyn aside, Brad will be the first Congressman representing us who came up from the ranks of community activism, and has had to prove his mettle, and move up, step by step. He is about as unpretentious as a politician can get.

Brad lives in Park Slope, with two teenagers and is wife, Meg Barnette, a former executive at Planned Parenthood, now president of Nonprofit New York.

Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Lander developed an early interest in political issues, and was strongly influenced by the example set by the civil rights and anti-war leaders Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. As a teenager he helped organize a march in Washington, D.C. in support of Jews in the Soviet Union who were not allowed to emigrate

Lander earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Chicago in 1991, where he joined the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). He earned a master’s degree in anthropology from University College London’ followed by a master’s degree in urban planning from the Pratt Institute in New York.

After he settled in Brooklyn, Brad became a member of his Community Board, where he served as Housing Chair, and coached Little League for a team sponsored by sponsored by the 78th Precinct Youth Council

From 1993 to 2003, Lander was the executive director of the Fifth Avenue Committee (FAC), a Park Slope nonprofit organization that develops and manages affordable housing .For his work he received the 2000 New York Magazine Civics Award..

From 2003 to 2009, Lander was a director of the Pratt Center for Community Development. In that position, he was a critic of the Bloomberg administration’s development policies. Lander’s work in 2003–2005 on Greenpoint-Williamsburg rezoning led to the first New York City inclusionary housing program to create affordable housing in new development outside Manhattan. Lander served on a mayoral taskforce that recommended reforms to the 421-a tax exemption for luxury housing and required that new development in certain areas of the city set aside affordable housing units. He co-led the completion of the One City One Future platform, a progressive vision for economic development in New York City. He stepped down as head of the organization in 2009 to seek a seat on the New York City Council.[27]

New York City Council (2010–2021)

First elected in 2009, Lander spent 12 years in the City Council, where he co-founded the council’s Progressive Caucus. During his tenure, he focused on expanding worker rights, tenant protections, police reform, and street safety. He also championed “participatory budgeting,” which allows community residents to directly vote on allocating portions of the budget to local projects.

Lander was one of four Council members who brought participatory budgeting to New York City, which allows citizens to propose, develop, and vote on items in the municipal budget. Over half of the 51 New York City Council Districts now engage in participatory budgeting.[34]

In 2013, Lander played a key role in a campaign to pass paid sick leave over Mayor Bloomberg’s veto, telling the Brooklyn Reporter the legislation would “make our city a fairer, more compassionate place to live and work”. In 2015, Lander passed legislation to ban discriminatory employment credit checks, ending the practice of companies discriminating against people because of their credit history. In March 2015, outside a Park Slope car wash that was closed at the time, Lander was arrested for blocking traffic to show support for eight striking car washers; it was his fourth arrest (there were more to come). In November 2016, he announced his intention to get arrested as part of the “Fight for $15” National Day of Action, saying it was “part of a long tradition of civil disobedience, and it takes a little courage”.

In the City Council Lander crafted a number of workers’ rights policies. In 2017, he passed legislation to require fast food and retail companies to give their workers stable scheduling and restrict on-call scheduling and last-minute changes. Lander also sponsored a successful bill to prevent fast food workers from being fired without just cause and to allow them to appeal terminations through arbitration. He worked with the Freelancers Union to create the Freelance Isn’t Free Act, the first legislation of its kind to ensure that freelancers and independent contractors are paid fully and on time .In 2018, Lander achieved the first ruling in the country to guarantee a living wage for Uber, Lyft, and other for-hire drivers.

As part of the #TooHotToLearn campaign, Lander led the push to secure air conditioning for all New York City Public Schools classrooms, shining a spotlight on the 25 percent of classrooms that lacked it.

Social Justice

In January 2021, Lander said: “As a white man, [the work of racial justice] starts by listening as honestly as I can to Black people about the anger and pain they are feeling, and the system of white supremacy and systemic racism it reflects. That is not easy, because it implicates me”.[65] He supported removing the statue of Christopher Columbus from Columbus Circle.[65]

Israel and Palestine

Lander’s council district included large numbers of Jewish and Muslim people. According to The Forward, Lander has worked to balance relationships with both groups, “befriending both the far-right Brooklyn politician Dov Hikind and the pro-Palestinian activist and organizer Linda Sarsour”.

In 2020, Lander visited the West Bank to learn more about conditions under the Israeli occupation and expressed support for efforts to achieve Palestinian human rights. While in Israel he participated in a protest outside the Israeli consulate in solidarity with the 2023 Israeli judicial reform protests

In March 2023, Lander wrote an op-ed in the left-wing Israeli newspaper Haaretz urging President Joe Biden to stop providing a “blank check” to an “increasingly authoritarian” Israeli government and asking Democrats to stop obeying the pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC.

In October 2023 Lander split with and left the Democratic Socialists of America in 2023 following the October 7 Hamas massacre, because of their lack of empathy with the October 7th victims. He has not re-joined. In a September 2025 speech, he championed the creation of an alliance “of anti-Zionists and liberal Zionists” seeking to end “the horrors in Gaza.” He calls himself a “a liberal Zionist who has called Israel’s war in Gaza a genocide and supports conditioning military aid” to Israel.

Lander has stated that if elected, he would vote to recognize a Palestinian state and oppose the sale of offensive weapons to Israel.

BRAD LANDER ARRESTED at 26 Federal Plaza by ICE June 17, 2025. Photo Courtesy of The City. Credit: Ben Fractenberg.

In December 2017, Lander was arrested at the U.S. Capitol while protesting a bill that lowered taxes on corporations and wealthy people while cutting healthcare; he tweeted, “Being arrested with Ady Barkan in the halls of Congress while … fighting for a country where we provide health care for those who need it … is something I’ll remember for the rest of my life”.[79] In June 2018 he was arrested for blocking traffic, disorderly conduct, and failing to disperse at a protest outside the Brooklyn office of State Senator Marty Golden.

NYC Comptroller (2022–2025)

Lander was elected as NYC Comptroller in 2021, serving as the city’s chief financial officer and budget watchdog. In this role, he managed the city’s pension funds—advocating for net-zero emissions targets by 2040—and audited city agencies to improve financial transparency.

In March 2022, Lander called on Mayor Eric Adams to abandon his effort to shift retired municipal workers onto a new Medicare program and comply with a court order declaring the move illegal. He subsequently refused to register the city’s contract with Aetna, citing pending legislation that called the program’s legality into question, but Adams overrode his decision and registered the contract. In 2024, the New York Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that the Adams administration could not force the retirees to switch to the new health plan.

Lander developed a reputation as a foil to Adams, often criticizing or using the comptroller’s oversight role to challenge his policies. In 2023, Politico called Lander Adams’s “archrival”. In February 2025, Lander released a public letter to Adams threatening to convene a meeting of the Inability Committee if Adams did not “develop and present a detailed contingency plan.

In June 2025, as Donald Trump increased deportations of immigrants, Lander began accompanying defendants to immigration hearings. On June 17, 2025 Lander was arrested and handcuffed by masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials at an immigration court while linking arms with a person ICE was trying to detain. The reason given for the arrest was “assaulting law enforcement and impeding a federal officer”, according to Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin. Lander was released and said he “certainly did not” assault an officer. The arrest was quickly condemned by an array of Democratic politicians from the state, including New York State Governor Kathy Hochul, who called it “bullshit”, and NYS Attorney General Letitia James, who called it a “shocking abuse of power” and “grotesque escalation of tensions”.

Lander was arrested by DHS again on September 18, 2025 along with State Senators Jabari Brisport, Gustavo Rivera and Julia Salazar, and Assemblymembers Robert Carroll, Emily Gallagher, Jessica González-Rojas, Marcela Mitaynes, Steven Raga, Tony Simone, and Claire Valdez, while trying to access ICE detention cells and protest the detentions at the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building. In a two-day bench trial in June 2026, Lander was found not guilty of obstructing officers’ access to an elevator.

Additionally, Brad was a major supporter of the rights of people with disabilities. Lander has actively fought for accessible public transit, including rallying to protect congestion pricing funds earmarked for MTA subway elevators and system-wide accessibility. He organized lawyers (including me) to sue Governor Hochul when she “paused” Congestion Pricing, which stopped citywide installation of subway elevators. He also led a sweeping audit of the city’s school bus system, exposing chronic failures that disproportionately impact students with disabilities and demanding comprehensive structural overhauls. Through his office, Lander published data-driven reports like the Disability Employment Spotlight, analyzing labor force participation and advocating for increased hiring and accommodations for disabled New Yorkers.

His office adopted a first-ever Five-Year Accessibility Plan to improve physical, digital, and programmatic access for people with disabilities within the Comptroller’s own operations,, and regularly convened Disability Justice Roundtables to center the voices of advocates, independent living centers, and legal rights organizations in municipal decision-making.

Now, this progressive activist is our Congressmember. How lucky we are. No wonder Bella is smiling!

This article was based, in part, on biographical information drawn from NYC.gov, Congress,gov, Ballotpedia, Wikipedia, and the Lander for Congress website.

Village Assembly Race Still Up In the Air!

Ryder Kessler Loses Big Time

By Arthur Schwartz

DAVID SIFFERT. Photo courtesy of David Siffert’s campaign.

On June 23rd, the night when the news was full of new faces, incumbents losing (like Village Congressman Dan Goldman), other than for City Council (where we elected new City Council Members last November (Harvey Epstein) and April (Carl Wilson) we completed a total change of the guard in Greenwich Village, Soho, the Lower East Side, and the Financial District. Come January 1, our new Congress Member is Brad Lander (who we write about in this issue), our new State Senator will be Grace Lee (who we will interview in our August issue,) in the West Village the new City Council member (who has already taken office) is Carl Wilson, and in the East Village (below 6th St) ; in the Lower East Side’s 65th Assembly District Illapa Sairitupac won a 6 way race (he is a DSA member); and in the East Village above 6th St, Keith Powers, who won a Special Election in February, will continue.

JEANNINE KIELY. Photo courtesy of Jeannine Kiely’s campaign.

But in the 66th Assembly District, which encompasses the Village west of 1st Avenue , Soho and Tribeca, the race is still too close to call! Jeannine Keily leads David Siffert by 56 votes in the unofficial tally of scanning machines, and, at press time, there are still mail ballots to count. The best news of the night (in that district) was that Ryder Kessler, the real estate developer candidate posing as a lefty, lost big-time (following a Village View expose), getting only 21% of the vote (He spent $300 for each vote!). Maybe he will go away, and the Working Families Party, which endorsed him, will figure out how they got hijacked.