Epicenter NYC and TBN24 invited several incumbents and challengers in key primary races across New York City to participate in the Candidate Conversations series. Interviews with other candidates will be scheduled and published ahead of the June primary. Are you running? Drop us a line at hello@epicenter-nyc.com.
The early voting period runs from Saturday, June 13 through Sunday, June 21, with the primary election taking place on Tuesday, June 23. To view your ballot and polling location, visit findmypollsite.vote.nyc.
Aber Kawas, the organizer and democratic socialist running for New York State Senate District 12, which spans Astoria, Long Island City, Sunnyside, among other neighborhoods, is both fed up and deeply familiar with the effects of ICE-related arrests of protestors. It’s such a Queens story, she told Epicenter NYC’s founder S. Mitra Kalita: one she came to know through her longtime work with Arab American communities on immigration issues.
That includes hosting Know Your Rights workshops for people impacted by police surveillance and Islamophobia. Over the past year, Kawas has worked on cases involving student activists, including Mahmoud Khalil, helping secure their release from ICE detention. For her, the experience has underscored the disconnect between the current administration’s policies and what people in the world’s borough need most.
“When Trump decides he’s going to cut healthcare, when Trump decides he’s going to spend a billion dollars on war a day rather than giving that money to education,” Kawas said, “then it is going to be up to the state to supplement what we lose.”
Kawas said her experience listening to and organizing communities has prepared her to be the kind of legislator the district needs: one that will negotiate for her constituents in Albany, push policies such as taxing the wealthy and work alongside grassroots movements to change the status quo in the state Legislature.
