COMMUNITY-ORIENTED EDUCATION PLAN
As a graduate of PS 230 and CUNY-Brooklyn College, Shahana experienced underfunded and segregated public education in the district and saw firsthand how the City routinely fails students and families, particularly immigrants and students with disabilities. Remote learning has only made educational inequities worse, and reopening plans must be rooted in equity. With more federal and state funding coming into the city’s public schools, Shahana will organize with students, parents/guardians, and teachers for an equitable education with smaller class sizes, more guidance counselors, and accessibility for students with disabilities — from early childhood through college.
As Council Member, Shahana will fight to:
Desegregate schools by abolishing screens, create sustained pipelines for Black and brown teachers, and expand culturally responsive education in the District.
Expand free infant and toddler care in District 39, fight for better wages for early childhood educators, and expand childcare on CUNY campuses.
Fighting alongside state legislators for a New Deal for CUNY, increase the City’s investment in CUNY’s mental health services, crumbling campus buildings, and CUNY ASAP, a comprehensive support program that doubles graduation rates.
COMMUNITY HEALTH
No one should be denied healthcare. As a Lupus survivor who navigated through a nebulous and costly healthcare system at 17, Shahana knows firsthand the importance of free and accessible healthcare. We must organize for universal healthcare, and push for the New York Health Act to create a statewide single-payer healthcare system, and for Medicare for All at the federal level. However, until our state and federal government act, the City Council must expand healthcare coverage and accessibility through investing in public hospitals, funding family caretakers so elders can age in place, and tackle food insecurity by investing in the City’s food distribution programs.
As Council Member, Shahana will fight to:
End language barriers to healthcare access by investing in translators and interpreters for primary care and mental health services.
Recruit diverse mental health counselors of color, with disabilities, and from immigrant communities to practice at public hospitals and community-based health clinics.
Expand NYC Care, the City’s low-cost health care program, to include more community-based healthcare providers, and increase the City’s investment in mental health services on CUNY campuses.
FIGHTING FOR OUR COMMUNITY’S SMALL BUSINESSES
As the daughter of a Bangladeshi restaurant owner, Shahana knows that running a small business in Brooklyn was hard enough before the pandemic. Our COVID-19 recovery must center relief for small businesses — from restaurants to nightlife to arts venues. Shahana will help small businesses recover from the pandemic and thrive by passing commercial rent cancellation, commercial rent control, and permanently bring dining, arts, and performances to Open Streets.
As Council Member, Shahana will fight to:
Introduce a commercial rent control bill to stabilize rent for small businesses.
Make open dining permanent, and provide free infrastructure for outdoor dining and workshops to help restaurants stay in compliance.
Partner with the Mayor’s Office of Minority and Women-owned Business Enterprises t0 make it easier for businesses owned by women and people of color to apply for City grants and contracts.
DIVEST FROM THE NYPD, INVEST IN COMMUNITY SAFETY
We must defund and demilitarize the NYPD, and create a city where public safety means access to affordable housing, equitable education, and green union jobs: not caging and disenfranchising our community. As a student at Brooklyn College, Shahana experienced the New York Police Department’s harmful surveillance of New Yorkers firsthand when the NYPD infiltrated campus clubs run by Muslim students. A truly safe New York City means ending mass incarceration, surveillance, and over-policing.
As Council Member, Shahana will fight to:
Defund the NYPD’s budget by at least $3 billion, and reallocate the funds to public education, youth services, affordable housing, and mental health services.
Institute police-free schools by removing police from NYC's public schools and instead invest in guidance counselors and mental health services.
Expand Participatory Budgeting to give community members the power to invest public funds in their neighborhoods.
HOUSING OUR NEIGHBORS:
LAND USE FOR THE PEOPLE
Our district is home to an affordable housing and land use crisis: exacerbated by gentrification that’s prioritizing real estate developers over community members. As a former public housing organizer, Shahana is focused on creating and investing in permanent affordable housing over temporary shelters. And she knows the city must provide tenants with resources to defend themselves against predatory landlords.
As Council Member, Shahana will fight to:
Prevent the privatization of NYCHA and push for fully funded public housing to make NYCHA livable and sustainable.
Expand tenants’ rights, including access to legal counsel, and resources to help tenants organize with their communities.
Create a more participatory City planning process that centers environmental, racial, economic, and social justice to ensure future rezonings do not exclude impacted residents like the Gowanus Rezoning process did.
OUR VISION FOR A FEMINIST GREEN NEW DEAL:
DEMOCRATIZING OUR INFRASTRUCTURE TO MITIGATE CLIMATE CHANGE
Hurricane Sandy was a stark reminder that New York must invest in public infrastructure. Failing to invest in public infrastructure has serious impacts on the health of our communities. Cramped living spaces and proximity to heavy car traffic led to Shahana developing Lupus and friends getting diagnosed with other diseases linked to environmental degradation, like Tuberculosis, heart disease, and asthma. Shahana knows that we need intersectional, feminist solutions to adapt to and mitigate the climate crisis and invest in our collective future.
As Council Member, Shahana will fight to:
Expand green roofs on community centers and fund cooling centers to communities who are most vulnerable to rising temperatures, including seniors and public housing residents.
Transition to clean, renewable energy and shift our utilities from investor-owned companies to public ownership.
Build community WiFi networks to create climate-resilient Internet infrastructure and close the digital divide.
CREATING A WALKABLE CITY:
ACCESSIBLE STREETS AND PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION
From a lack of protected bike lanes, to poorly lit streets, to fear of harassment from the NYPD, our car-centric streets are dangerous for pedestrians, cyclists, and public transit users. After having both hips and her shoulder replaced, Shahana struggled to travel across the city because of inaccessible public infrastructure: she had to navigate a public transportation system without elevators, or cycle on broken streets with bad lighting. As a disability justice activist Shahana has fought for transit accessibility in the District, including while at Council Member Lander’s office where through her work with Participatory Budgeting Shahana secured funding for elevators at the 7th Avenue (F/G) Station making Methodist Hospital finally accessible. Shahana’s vision for safe streets centers accessible public transportation, lively open streets, and a rehaul of our cycling infrastructure.
As Council Member, Shahana will fight to:
Make cycling safer by prioritizing protected bike lanes, focusing on neighborhoods with high rates of bicycle injuries and fatalities.
Create fast and reliable bus service throughout the district by bringing back the B71 bus, and create more car-free busways on 5th Avenue (B63), 7th Avenue (B67/B69), and Church Avenue (B35).
Hold the MTA accountable for its plan to create fully accessible subway stations and prioritize installing much-needed elevators in the district by 2034.
Create permanent Open Streets throughout the City and increase Open Streets in neighborhoods of color with fewer public spaces.
RADICAL LANGUAGE JUSTICE IN NYC
For New Yorkers who speak a language other than English, the availability of translation services and materials is a matter of life and death: especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Vaccine and testing sites, and contact tracing services lack adequate translation services and materials, putting frontline workers who don’t speak English further at risk. The most linguistically diverse neighborhoods in Brooklyn had the highest number of COVID-19 cases, including Kensington. Language inaccessibility is not just a healthcare problem: it also prevents full participation in voting, families from helping their kids adjust to remote learning, and receiving full public services. Immigration status and language ability should not be barriers to city services or adequate care. Even though New York City is a “sanctuary city,” the threat of ICE is real. We need radical language justice so everyone knows their rights and can mobilize against injustice together.
As Council Member, Shahana will fight to:
Establish a new “Citywide Interpretation Fund” to fund interpreters, translators, sign-language services, and interpretation equipment.
Create a pipeline for diverse translators, including those fluent in languages outside of the most commonly spoken languages in the City.
Expand IDNYC, NYC’s municipal ID outreach program, to enroll even more New Yorkers.
BUILDING WORKER SOLIDARITY IN BROOKLYN
The labor movement is essential to the fight for justice in New York City: unions are why we have a 5 day work week, and child labor and worker protection laws. But our city's labor movement faces serious threats from privatization and union-busting employers. Organized labor is deeply personal to Shahana. She was born and raised in Kensington, home to taxi, construction, and food delivery workers fighting for the expanded and guaranteed protections and unionization for all sectors. Shahana will support workers from the picket line to City Hall. She will expand the City's investigations into labor abuse, fight against cuts to public sector jobs, and create green union jobs.
As Council Member, Shahana will fight to:
Launch a new Green Collar Jobs initiative to create green unionized jobs.
Strengthen workplace protections for gig workers and freelancers, and create an undocumented workers bill of rights that includes paid sick leave, access to legal counsel, and the right to unionize.
Expand right to counsel for all employees of small businesses, freelancers, and undocumented workers.
IMMIGRANT JUSTICE
Shahana’s parents immigrated from Bangladesh to Brooklyn 30 years ago, making their home in Kensington, one of the largest working-class Bangladeshi communities in the city. Growing up, Shahana experienced the NYPD’s surveillance of Muslim students, and how hostile the city’s healthcare system is to immigrants. Shahana’s candidacy is bigger than just electing the first South Asian to New York City Council: it is about electing an organizer who will protect our neighbors from deportation, allow everyone to access the healthcare they need, and build a truly participatory democracy that leaves no one behind.
As Council Member, Shahana will fight to:
Prevent ICE from entering our communities and fully fund deportation defense services.
Pass legislation to allow all New Yorkers to vote in municipal elections, regardless of immigration status.
Expand free healthcare for immigrant New Yorkers, and invest in peer-to-peer mental health counseling to provide culturally relevant and destigmatized care.
REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE
Reproductive justice means having the access, dignity, and autonomy to make the most informed decisions for one’s body. As Council Member, Shahana will fight for expanded healthcare access - from funding community based reproductive clinics in the District to advocating for the NY Health Act statewide. Young people demand comprehensive sex education curriculum, and Shahana will continue to fight with them to make this a reality in New York City.
Shahana’s vision for true reproductive justice includes:
Expanding access to community reproductive health clinics and centers that provide free access to birth control and abortions.
Funding reproductive care by advocating for State leaders to pass a single-payer healthcare system, which includes reproductive care, to provide care to all New Yorkers, regardless of immigration status or ability to pay.
Fighting medical racism by funding community based health clinics that provide access to prenatal and postnatal care, birthing clinics, midwifery, and improve women’s general health and wellbeing.
Ensuring that New York City public school students have a culturally competent, inclusive, non-stigmatizing, accessible, and affirming sex education curriculum.
BUILDING LGBTQ+ POWER AND COMMUNITY IN BROOKLYN AND BEYOND
The next City Council must tangibly fight for LGBTQ New Yorkers - showing up for Pride marches is meaningless when New York’s queer communities, particularly queer communities of color, still face rising rates of police harassment, job loss, and predatory harassment from landlords. Shahana’s vision for a feminist government centers queer communities, and she will continue to support queer organizers’ vision for the district and the city.
As Council Member, Shahana will fight to:
Expand legal and workplace protections, and establish a District-wide hotline to respond to hate crimes without police intervention.
Fund LGBTQ-focused community-based health clinics that provide services like gender affirming surgery, hormone therapy, testing for sexually transmitted infections, access to contraceptives and medication to prevent HIV, and mental health services.
End LGBTQ homelessness by investing in programs that create permanent affordable housing and prioritizing youth living in LGBTQ shelters for rental assistance.
RESTORING AND SURVIVING:
NYC SURVIVOR SECURITY PLAN
Domestic violence is the leading cause of homelessness in New York City. Shahana’s approach to ending domestic violence is informed by her advocacy fighting for survivors like Ms. Zahan, a constituent living in an abusive household who urgently needed a Bangla-speaking caseworker to secure safe housing. As Council Member, Shahana will invest in safe housing and targeted, multilingual, and community-based services that reach the most vulnerable survivors.
As Council Member, Shahana will fight to:
Create a new citywide “Survivor Security Fund” to provide immediate financial support to survivors to cover necessary costs like housing, medical care, and mental health resources.
Advocate for legal reforms that allow survivors to leave abusive homes, like ending early lease termination fees and forcing landlords to cover the cost of changing building locks.
Create a social worker-run domestic violence hotline run out of her City Council office that provides survivors with trauma-informed care and resources without having to rely on the police.
ORGANIZING WITH TAXI AND RIDESHARE DRIVERS FOR BETTER PROTECTIONS
Taxi drivers have been failed by tech corporations, privatization, and the City Council. Due to their status as independent contractors, rideshare drivers are unjustly denied legal workplace protections and benefits. The medallion crisis has also forced many taxi drivers into insurmountable debt, bankruptcy, foreclosure, and suicide. As a lifelong Kensington resident, many of Shahana’s neighbors and uncles are taxi workers facing the precarious nature of labor that denies workers healthcare and a livable wage. As Council Member, Shahana will organize with drivers and advocates like the New York Taxi Worker Alliance to secure health and pension funds for all drivers.
As Council Member, Shahana will fight to:
Establish a health and pension fund for drivers through levying a small, cents-on-the-dollar surcharge per ride.
Work with colleagues in the state to classify drivers as employees instead of independent contractors, and provide drivers with labor protections and benefits.
Allocate funding towards better maintenance of toilets in public parks and spaces and mandate restaurants allow delivery drivers to use their restrooms at no cost.
BUILDING A PEOPLE’S ECONOMY
Expanding democracy in the workplace is key to worker justice. Worker cooperatives are businesses that are owned by workers, and provide higher wages and better workplace conditions for their staff: especially immigrants, women, and people of color. As Council Member, Shahana will invest in worker cooperatives and prioritize employee-owned businesses for city contracts. She will also work to educate New Yorkers on what just workplaces can look like, and will fight for labor education from K-12 to CUNY.
As Council Member Shahana will...
Invest in the City’s Worker Cooperative Business Development Initiative
Build workplace democracy into K-12 civic education curriculum, and increase summer youth employment placements in worker cooperatives across NYC
Sustain cooperatively owned solar infrastructure projects in Brooklyn, like UPROSE’s Sunset Park community solar project
DISABILITY JUSTICE
Shahana was politicized after her diagnosis with Lupus at 17. From crowdfunding hospital bills to being denied for Access-A-Ride, her story is a familiar one to New Yorkers who live with chronic illnesses and disabilities. In her early years with Lupus, Shahana became an advocate for disability justice, fighting for accessibility improvements at train stations, and organizing at Brooklyn College for better services for students with disabilities. Shahana’s run for City Council represents a shift in our city’s political system, which largely prevents disabled people from leading.
Shahana’s vision for a city that prioritizes wellness, joy, and liberatory care includes…
Ending the criminalization of youth with disabilities by removing police from schools, and investing in guidance counselors, school nurses, and social workers
Expanding the City’s on-demand Access-a-Ride pilot program, and fighting for accessible pedestrian signals at every New York City intersection
Fully funding supportive housing programs that provide accessibility modifications in homes of people with disabilities, and workshops on housing rights for tenants with disabilities
FROM AVENUE C TO PROSPECT PARK: OPEN SPACES IN DISTRICT 39
Parks and public open spaces are vital to our community. While District 39 is home to expansive green spaces like Prospect Park, our district also includes neighborhoods with some of the least park space in the city, such as Borough Park and Kensington. Underfunded parks and public spaces leave our community members feeling unsafe, particularly those most vulnerable to harassment. Shahana saw the impact our crumbling parks had on her friends, family, and neighbors, and in 2016, rallied with her neighbors to transform a nearby vacant lot into the now vibrant Avenue C Plaza. She worked with her neighbors to transform the abandoned lot into a vibrant open space for the community with seating and beautiful flowers and shrubs. Shahana continues to fight for our neighborhoods’ parks and green spaces, securing community funding for critical open spaces in our community, including the restoration of the Pagoda in the Prospect Park Ravine, and expanded green roofs for our libraries. Shahana believes everyone should live within a five-minute walk to a green space, playground, park, or garden.
As Council Member Shahana will fight to….
Invest in a citywide composting collection program, that expands outreach to communities of color, NYCHA tenants, and restaurants to meet our zero waste goals equitably.
Commit to the New Yorkers for Parks’ plan to double the NYC Parks Department’s budget, and hire more maintenance staff to keep parks clean, accessible, and functioning with drinking fountains, public restrooms, hand sanitizer, and soap.
Reenvision Ocean Parkway as a safer public space and greenway for pedestrians and cyclists by repaving the greenway, lowering speed limits for cars, and improving benches and seating for coworking, school work, and socializing.
CONFRONTING HATE
As anti-Asian, anti-Black, anti-semitic, and Islamophobic and anti-immigrant violence escalates across the city, we need community driven solutions instead of relying on the NYPD, which often escalates harm and violence in our neighborhoods. Shahana will fight to divest from the NYPD, and reinvest our public dollars into programs that address the root causes of racist violence — including quality housing, union jobs, and public education. She will make our streets truly safe by increasing funding for street lamps and trash pick-ups, and hosting community town halls to process incidents of violence in the district.
As Council Member Shahana will fight to...
Develop community protocols with religious institutions for navigating violence rather than relying on police, including bystander intervention training, phone trees, and de-escalation strategies.
Create a new Neighborhood Stewardship Initiative, a program which would hire residents and create new green union jobs to ensure open streets remain truly open without police presence.
Fund restorative justice programs in public schools, like the Brooklyn Community Foundation’s Brooklyn Restorative Justice program, which reduces school suspensions and increases student wellbeing.
PROTECTING OUR ECOSYSTEMS AND ANIMAL FRIENDS
As a fervent animal lover and cat parent herself, Shahana will advocate for increased rights for animals and their guardians, such as allowing survivors of abuse to stay with their pets in transitional shelters. She will also protect wildlife, particularly as climate change threatens our city’s biodiversity. Policies that center the well-being of animals — whether domestic or wild — can make our city more enjoyable and sustainable for all, such as expanding open spaces and dog parks.
As Council Member, Shahana will fight to:
End inhumane animal treatment, labor, and cruelty such as banning horse carriages and removing the NYPD from animal calls.
Increase accessible and well-funded dog parks and open spaces, particularly in communities of color.
Bring an intersectional and anti-racist lens to animal rights organizing that protects the dignity of animals while being inclusive of cultural practices.