The 2021 election cycle in New York City has been a particularly fascinating one, with over 500 candidates running for public office at the peak.

We are no strangers to New York elections, but the nature of this election made us feel it was necessary to speak on them for the first time. This is especially due to decisions like ranked choice voting that, while democratizing, have led to a number of less-than-qualified or ignorant candidates running for office. We took serious offense to the idea that anyone could be elected without knowing what their job is or what they should do. To help address this issue, as well as inform candidates of our own stances, we created “The BLAC Manifesto”, a three-part document aimed at providing: information regarding the responsibilities, powers, and limitations of elected officials, our political objectives for the betterment of our Black and brown communities, and our reimagination of several aspects of New York City government. After all, to do your job well you need to know what your job is, and by knowing your job you can help to change it and make it better. 

We issued the Manifesto in early February, sending it to every candidate we could and asking them a simple question – “Do you agree to the Manifesto?” – and in mid-April we reminded our candidates again to respond. It is unfortunate and somewhat insulting, then, that the overwhelming majority of candidates ignored our outreaches. Understandably, in the flurry of correspondence, mailings, and other flak, things can be lost. Inexcusable, however, that after reminders they either missed them again or felt that it was beneath them to complete. It shows that traditional methods are being substituted for sloganeering on social media. Few individuals without years of experience with New York politics know who to get in contact with to answer their questions, and it is a disservice to constituents that traditional communication methods are not as effective. 

In preparing this “BLAC List”, and notwithstanding the disappointing response rate, we evaluated candidates against our Manifesto by each section. Many candidates, respondents or not, had scores that were discouraging in light of the highly racialized nature of many of the issues at play. It was even more disappointing that candidates seemed to ignore the issues with elected offices, especially the crippling lack of power that many of these offices have to actually affect the city. Furthermore, discussion was conspicuously lacking on the issue of term limits and “office shopping” by term-limited politicians, an issue that we will expand on in the future.

Our goal is to make the “BLAC List” a permanent fixture of future elections. To preserve the integrity of our process, we have elected to only endorse candidates who have a.) submitted a response to the Manifesto, and b.) meet the standards of BLAC and TBI as defined in the Manifesto. For candidates who did not respond, but whom we feel have satisfied our criteria, we will only “recommend” them. While we could have stopped there, we also feel that certain candidates are unfit in our eyes to serve in certain offices; their faults have earned them a spot on our “Oh hell no!” list. And while we are grateful to everyone who did take the time to respond to our Manifesto, their response did not automatically qualify them for an endorsement or recommendation.

Proceed to Part 2: Endorsements, recommendations and “Oh hell no!” 🠖