Village Independent Democrats Honors Alec Pruchnicki at Annual Gala

By Audrey Hill

On Sept. 29, the Village Independent Democrats (VID) gathered at their annual gala to honor the advocacy work of longtime board member Alec Pruchnicki, M.D., along with Hands Off NYC, the Gilbert Baker Foundation and the Bronx Defenders.

“Here I am, I’ve been working year after year with no help from anybody and I did it all myself. I have no one to thank and this is way overdue,” Pruchnicki joked after receiving his award, “I’ve always wanted to hear somebody give that speech. I’ve never heard it.”

But in all seriousness, he said, those kinds of acceptance speeches are rare because they’re almost never true. “In advocacy, you are not the sole hero going and fighting impossible odds,” Pruchnicki told the crowd of activists, elected officials and community members. “You’re not Odysseus, you’re not Spider Man. You have to join with others, you need a base, you need friends, you need allies.”

Pruchnicki joined VID in 2012 and spent years working on the group’s health committee. A geriatrician for more than two decades, he has a deeply held passion for single-payer health care. This work spilled over into the housing committee because of time he spent working in assisted living.

But he wasn’t always such a fixture of club politics. Pruchnicki came of age in the sixties – a fact he joked is evidenced by his head of white or “platinum blonde” hair. He went to anti-war demonstrations, was on the political left and was moderately active but “never blew up any buildings.”

At the time, club politics was a bit of a taboo. It was seen as too establishment which is perhaps why it took him so long to come around to it. “We learned ‘do not get involved with club politics. Club politics is corrupt. It’s bourgeois politics. It’s working for the man,’” Pruchnicki said.

It was only after graduate school that he took the first step in the direction of politics ─ though through a more circuitous route. Interested in the single-payer health care movement, he joined Physicians for a National Health Program.

Joining with others, he began to see the value of politics as a group project. There was just more he could accomplish organizing with others than he could railing against a powerful system alone. “No matter how strongly you feel about it,” Pruchnicki said, “how much can you do as a single person going against a trillion dollar healthcare industry?”

But he also began to see their limits. With the group he was getting more face time with politicians, but it felt more like begging for them to do the right thing than having actual sway. Once he joined VID and was appointed to the executive board, things were different. “Within a few months of being on the executive board, four people running for elected office called me up and wanted to have lunch and discuss endorsements.” Pruchnicki marveled.

One of those people, Corey Johnson, ended up getting elected and later became the Speaker of the New York City Council from 2018 to 2022. Instead of begging for help, Pruchnicki was now on a first name basis with one of the city leaders of his party. And he found that Johnson, along with a number of other local elected officials in the area, shared his enthusiasm for single- payer care.

The road toward that goal is a constant battle, especially when keeping and funding existing programs is not a given. But Pruchnicki is a believer in the slow and steady dedication of the tortoise over the hare. “You have to be able to accept defeat and go on and keep working,” the geriatrician reflected. “Persistence counts as much as spectacular success.”

Now retired, Pruchnicki said that while it hasn’t been an easy adjustment, he has started to enjoy having more time for other things. Aside from his VID activities, he’s still a member of three different professional organizations, writes regularly for The Village View and was recently appointed to Community Board 2.

These days, the 78-year-old said he’s also thinking a lot about legacy. He said he’s learned a lot though geriatrics as well as his advocacy around health care and housing. He’s particularly passionate about the untapped benefits of assisted living facilities.

“There’s a tremendous potential for assisted living that people don’t realize yet,” said Pruchnicki, who has worked in the area for years. It’s not been exploited to its full capacity of providing housing, but also medical service, social services, socialization.”

For Pruchnicki, social media is the answer: a way to pass on a lifetime of knowledge to the next generation. While getting a new generation of people in the neighborhood active in politics and with VID is a priority of both Pruchnicki and the wider organization, he doesn’t have plans to leave at the moment.

“You can’t get involved, see heart-rending issues coming up, and then just turn your back and walk away,” Pruchnicki said.