The NYC Fair Economy Fund would be the City’s first-ever publicly-funded training, employment, and organizing program dedicated to achieving justice for those New Yorkers who have been historically excluded from the economy and who have disproportionately suffered during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Building on the Census Complete Count Fund model Amit pioneered and starting with dedicating just .1 percent of the City’s budget - $85 million - in the first year and building from there, A NYC Fair Economy Fund would:

• Publicly fund linguistically and culturally competent community organizers to provide workplace rights trainings, directly connect un- and under-employed New Yorkers to skills trainings, and organize around key local issues (climate change, transportation, participatory budgeting, civic engagement, local elections)
• Publicly fund immigrant small business organizers at Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) so that they can meaningfully help mom-and-pop, brick-and-mortar, immigrant-owned small businesses get access to loans, grants, and capital designed for them but that never reaches them because of massive government failures to communicate effectively;
• Publicly fund artists, performers, and creators for specific projects or for employment through existing arts & culture organizations, thereby helping to economically stabilize New Yorkers who are the very soul of the city and the heart of the economy;
• Partner directly with labor unions and informal labor groups (such as those working with day laborers) to train unemployed New Yorkers on new skills, such as those required to retrofit buildings, replace electrical and heating sources, and install renewable energy sources;
• Work to provide direct financial transfers to undocumented families who by law are largely ineligible for most federal and state assistance and to whom the City cannot provide City tax dollars as a result of a State prohibition; this would build on the model pioneered by the Open Society Foundation in 2020.

In addition, the Fund could possibly serve as a possible Portable Benefits Fund pilot, allowing gig and freelance workers access to the benefits that State-defined “employees” otherwise often receive, and through which workers can achieve greater degrees of economic stability.

• Justice for Taxi Drivers: On Day 1 of the new mayoral administration and City Council, the City must immediately identify a path of buying and relieving the outstanding $75 million in taxi driver (owner-operator) debt. This debt is one of the darkest stains on our city’s moral fabric, given that the City of New York created the secondary medallion market, was wantonly negligent in its regulation, and allowed for its crash, resulting in hundreds of millions in profit for predatory lenders and more than a dozen suicides and a lifetime of debt for our city’s taxi drivers.
• Justice for deliveristas: Deliveristas have kept quarantined New Yorkers fed and nourished throughout the pandemic, and yet remain among the most vulnerable workers in the city. The City must take immediate steps to ensure they can work with dignity and safety. This includes mandating that all restaurants allow deliveristas to use the bathroom and to have access to designated work spaces rest. In addition, the City could consider a licensing scheme wherein the deliveristas and/or their bikes are licensed, meaning that the City could then provide them with bikes and bags, and that there would generally be a much higher degree of public visibility into the operations (and much less of an incentive for the private firms to exploit the deliveristas).
• Justice for Sex Workers: As a City Council member, Amit would fight vociferously to have the “Walking While Trans” law that has criminalized untold numbers of BIPOC trans folx repealed. This would further serve as a basis for the elimination of NYPD’s Vice Squad, saving millions that can be reallocated for healthcare and mental health support services. Furthermore, the City must explore all possible legal paths to ensure sex workers can be included and covered in key labor protections: Sick and Safe Leave, and more.

Housing is a human right, and yet for too long, we've allowed developer greed instead of human need to dictate the housing that gets built in NYC. We must work directly with tenant organizers, housing activists, and those New Yorkers in greatest need to understand the full scope of the challenges, so that we can, together, begin to solve our housing crisis. We must do all that we can on the City level to work towards the goals of social housing, which can only be truly accomplished with significant congressional action. We must:

• Ensure all housing built on public land is deeply and permanently affordable. We are not building enough housing for the people who need it most. Prioritize creating housing for those who are the most severely rent-burdened, living in dangerously overcrowded conditions, and in shelter.
• Work exclusively with non-profit entities (and hold them highly accountable) when we must work with residential developers.
• Expand Right to Counsel to ensure all New Yorkers have free representation in Housing Court.
• Repurpose portions of the City’s $2 billion shelter budget to create purpose-built supportive housing and meaningfully increase voucher amounts.
• Fight in Congress for the repeal of the Faircloth Amendment, which prevents the federal government from building new public housing.
• Work to overhaul the rules that prevent the creation of dedicated affordable housing for artists and creators.
• Ensure that the approximately $200 million that goes unused by NYCHA every year in its annual capital budget is used to address the most pressing issues (mold, lead, lack of access to basic services).
• Replace AMI with a new formula, the Housing Vulnerability Index, that is based on a survey / community-driven “census” of those living in dangerously overcrowded conditions, in shelter, and in currently-illegal basements and attics.

• Develop a citywide plan to vaccinate all New Yorkers. This plan will prioritize frontline healthcare workers, individuals with the greatest health risks and neighborhoods hardest hit by COVID.
• Expand access to healthcare to all New Yorkers. This includes undocumented immigrants, gig workers, and those ineligible for Medicaid by piloting a single-payer model for NYC, starting with the expansion of NYC Care to all five boroughs.
• Increase the number of hospital beds in Queens. Of all the boroughs, Queens has the lowest number of beds per capita

• Improve city contracting. We should privilege New York City businesses over the lowest non-NYC based bidder. City agencies should have the freedom to purchase from local vendors provided that the good or service from the local business costs no more than 10% of the lowest non-NYC based bidder.
• Do right by our own homegrown businesses. Streamlining the city and state MWBE certification will allow small businesses to more easily find opportunity and make investments right here in New York. Create a path to commercial rent relief. Working with the state legislature, we must build power by organizing our small businesses to ensure that storefronts do not remain vacant for years as landlords seek ever higher rent and rent is affordable for new businesses to open. If a space remains vacant for three months, there would be a mandated 10% reduction in the publicly listed rent and additional reductions thereafter if the space remains vacant.
• Support our street vendors. Support proposals for expanding the number of permits to vend food on the streets and sidewalks; create a new dedicated vending law enforcement unit to eliminate NYPD from writing summonses; and create a street vendor advisory board, which will ensure fair and balanced vendor enforcement of the law, bringing street vendors to the policy making table. In addition, city law must be updated to require Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) to consider the inclusion of street vendor membership, so that the interests of all small businesses in an area-- of which street vendors are a part-- are collectively represented.

• Ensure healthy homes. Immediately tackle the most urgent issues that affect the health and wellbeing of NYCHA residents, beginning with lead and mold remediation.
• Listen to NYCHA residents. NYCHA is one of our greatest public assets and therefore must remain in public hands. As the city explores ways in which to partner with others to significantly improve living conditions, NYCHA residents--and not just an unelected bureaucracy-- must be an indelible part of the decision making process about the future of NYCHA, development by development.
• Leverage NYCHA’s buying power. Support resident entrepreneurs by creating a pipeline for purchasing from tenants, starting with identifying needs and supporting tenants in creating or sourcing needed products or services.
• Prioritize building community wealth through paradigm-shifting efforts pioneered by Urban Upbound and other Western Queens leaders that would involve potentially granting equity, ownership, or other revenue-generating rights to NYCHA residents through the leveraging of the City's land-use powers in the process of zoning or development deals made in the surrounding Long Island City area. If future developers, businesses, and employers want to utilize New York City's land and workforce, we must think creatively and aggressively about how to ensure that District 26 residents who have been most excluded from economic growth are included and stabilized into the future in an effort to dismantle the structure of race-based economic income inequality.

• Ensure that school buildings are safe. COVID-19 has shown us the potholes on the pathway to the future, and we must prepare by creating a task force drawing from the Departments of Education, Health, and School Construction Authority to invest in school infrastructure and ventilation to keep our schools safe today and for decades to come.
• Break the vicious cycle of intergenerational and racial poverty by having the City cover operational costs of NYC Kids Rise, which, in conjunction with the NYC College Savings Plan, immediately establishes college savings accounts for young students in DOE schools, allowing parents and communities to help save and build assets over time to help send kids to college. With income inequality and the racial wealth gap on the rise, it is critical that the City use every tool in its toolbox to make good on its promise of opportunity for all by preparing families and communities for economic mobility through higher education. In order to truly be effective, efforts to break the cycle of intergenerational poverty must start early, and expanding covering the basic operational costs to expand this life-changing program is a very small investment with an enormous return.
• Bring parents to the table in a meaningful way. Amit pledges to stay in real, consistent, substantive touch with parents and elevate their concerns to city leadership on an ongoing basis. Every school must take into account very sensitively the specific needs of its students and ensure that the school is speaking to parents regularly, and if the school needs help it should partner with local organizations.
• Ensure every school has sufficient mental health resources. Particularly as a result of Covid-19, children need additional support. Part of supporting this effort will include the city helping to recruit a corps of mental health professionals--social workers, counselors, and therapists-- from across the city that are dedicated to serving the unique needs of teachers as a cohort. Also in light of Covid-19 and its effects on social development and academic advancement, we must ensure that after school programs are fully funded and that is a priority.
• Continue building upon the city’s restorative justice initiative. We must work within the DOE and also dismantle the school to prison pipeline by ensuring educators are reflective of the diverse populations that they serve, further reducing the ceiling for suspension caps through re-examination of the disciplinary code, and fast-tracking the study and implementation of current City pilot models in all DOE schools.
• Ensure basic instruction, and teach the root causes of our social ills. First and foremost, we must ensure that teachers are keeping our children on track or challenging them to pursue their strengths. We must also ensure that we are righting the wrongs of the past by teaching the true history of racism, fight for gender equality and LGBTQ rights, and a truly post-colonial approach to understanding histories of the colonized world so that we can build a commitment towards a more equal and just world. Inclusive in this approach is improving multilingual communications from DOE and making Diwali school holiday.

A brighter, more vibrant future awaits. Safe, reliable, public transit; accessible parks and open spaces; a coastline that is safe against the next climate emergency. There is so much we can do to ensure a cleaner, greener future. To begin, we must:

• Immediately address the sharp decline in MTA ridership and revenues. By advocating for a federal stimulus and municipal control of the subway and bus systems operating within the five boroughs we can make the MTA more reflective of local needs.
• Expand Select Bus Service to provide better transit access in our district
• Ensure universal access to transit by enforcing ADA compliance
• Support the plans put forth by Transportation Alternatives. We must demand:
• Zero deaths on Queens Boulevard and fixing Northern Boulevard by adding safer crosswalks, exclusive time to pedestrians to cross the street, and wider medians; protected bike lanes so new cyclists will have a safe space to commute to work and small businesses in their neighborhood; repurpose and beautify excess road space with greenery, street art, and more seating for the community.
• Exclusive Walkway and Bikeway on Queensboro Bridge, including the creation of new, safe, ADA-compliant pedestrian access and approaches on both Queens and Manhattan sides.
• Invest in open space in park-starved neighborhoods. We want a New York where everyone lives within a 10-minute walk of a park that is open, accessible, and large enough for all to enjoy. Currently, more than 1.1. Million New Yorkers do not have access to a park within a 10- minute walk of where they live. Like most areas of life, Covid-19 has exposed the inequities of our parks system, as traveling to the city’s large parks is not always an option, and small neighborhood parks often do not have the room for many people to exercise and socially distance.
• Ensure that the city’s coastline is fully protected from rising seas. Amongst other protections, we must work with the MTA to ensure the subways will be safe during the next climate emergency.

• From 2006 to 2010, Black women were 12 times more likely than white women to die from pregnancy-related causes in New York City. We must address this societal failure with the urgency it deserves. I support Tricia Shimamura’s plan to ensure maternal mortality is not an inevitability.
• Ensure that we center women in any economic recovery plan. Nationally, four times as many women as men have dropped out of the labor force to take care of their families (data current as of September, 2020). We must take on immediate and long-term action to expand the child care infrastructure and establish more progressive work-family policies for both men and women.
• Address the reality that thirty years later, the MTA still consistently and flagrantly ignores the accessibility requirements outlined by the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. Just last year, they lost a federal lawsuit brought on due to providing insufficient means of accessibility. Only approximately 25% of MTA stations are accessible under ADA requirements, which severely limits the social and professional opportunities of disabled New Yorkers, who already face ostracization and disenfranchisement. We must expand ADA compliance to all MTA stations and center the voices of disability advocacy leaders to ensure their needs are truly being met.
• Co-sign the Municipal Voting Rights Bill, introduced by City Council Member Ydanis Rodriguez in January 2020, allowing Green Card holders and those with working permits to vote in Municipal Elections. New York City is home to more than 2 million immigrants who contribute to the financial, cultural, and social network that allows our city to thrive. Despite such contributions, they are not allowed to participate in elections that directly affect them and their families. The signing of this Bill would ensure that approximately 900,000 NYC residents would be allowed to participate in political parties and vote in Municipal elections, such as City Council, Comptroller, Public Advocate, Borough President, and Mayor.

Since 2014 NYC has spent $1.3 billion to pay for police misconduct claims. That’s not a functional policing system and the result is discrimination and death for far too many black and brown New Yorkers. We can keep people safe and reinvest in education, and civic engagement so that we can work to dismantle systemic racism, fight poverty, and build power. To ensure the safety of our communities, we must:

• Divest $1 billion from the NYPD with a plan to move toward $3 billion within 2-4 years. Including the police in the City's hiring freeze, an initial reduction of the force by 5%, cutting invasive surveillance technology, and repurposing policing funds by dedicating them to addressing issues of mental health, education, and employment are all ways to implement this cut immediately.
• Divert these funds to communities in the aforementioned or similar means. With just one day of the NYPD's operating budget (~$15.5 million), we could fund one year of CUNY for 2,000 students, provide more than 600 businesses with loans of $25,000 each, or pay for 1,000 young New Yorkers to work at local small businesses in their communities for an entire year. Imagine, then, what we could accomplish with a week’s worth; a month’s worth; or even more. 
• Make marijuana legal and tax it. Overturn and expunge any and all sentences based on minor quantities of marijuana possession. Aggressively invest the resulting tax profits in neighborhoods disproportionately devastated by the racist war on drugs and over-policing.
• Decriminalize all drugs and institute fines for possession of small quantities of illegal drugs. Utilize portions of the revenue generated through marijuana tax and drug possession fines to fund rehabilitation centers and safe injection sites.
• Closing Rikers is a non-negotiable top priority, and I will fight hard to implement the Renewable Rikers plan.  As we're working to do that, we must truly halt solitary confinement (despite assertions, it has not been fully eliminated), and commit to working towards a jail-free NYC. 
• Remove the NYPD from all mental health crisis response operations and from our schools. We need to reimagine policing entirely, and establish a civilian “First Responder Corps” to respond to defuse and neutralize, not escalate and criminalize. 

In schools, DIVEST from our criminalization:

• Remove all police personnel from New York City public schools, and do not transfer their supervision to the Department of Education.
• Remove all metal detectors, scanners, and invasive security measures from New York City public schools.
• Remove NYPD from responding to mental health crises in schools and from entering schools for any school related matters.
• End all zero tolerance policies and practices, and prohibit arrest, summons, and juvenile reports non-criminal violations and misdemeanors, which disproportionately impacts Black and Brown young people.

And INVEST in our care:

• Fully fund and implement restorative practices at all schools by 2022.

• Fully fund and increase school support staff, including guidance counselors, nurses, social workers, restorative justice coordinators, and academic and social support staff. 

• Establish a system-wide mental health continuum and increase funding for mental health supports for all students.

• Ensure all students have access to 1) Culturally responsive education, 2) high-quality and comprehensive selection of sports, arts, and elective courses, and 3) college access supports including Student Success Centers.

So as to ensure that EBT/SNAP recipients are able to access as many opportunities as possible, we must:

• Advocate in Congress to increase monthly SNAP benefit amounts so no New Yorker has to go hungry before their benefits replenish

• Advocate for discounted rates for SNAP recipients at green markets of all types in NYC

• Advocate for free entry at cultural institutions for all SNAP recipients 

To address food scarcity we must:

• Increase funding for local food pantries
• Baseline food assistance in the City budget and make sure that it's fully funded
• Ensure that food provided by the City is fresh and culturally appropriate
• Expand SNAP and WIC Outreach, SNAP Pre-screening, and enrollment to ensure eligible residents access these benefits
• Expand the Food Retail Expansion to Support Health (FRESH) program brings healthy and affordable food options to communities by lowering the costs of owning, leasing, developing, and renovating retail supermarket space
• Increase funding for urban gardens as a means to produce locally grown nutritious food
• Establish and empower a permanent NYC Food Champion to assess and address food insecurity from within City government every day—bringing together all relevant agencies (DSS/HRA, Sanitation, DOH, Mayor's Office of Food Policy, ACS, DOE and others.

App-based delivery services have become a major source of injustice and indignity for 80,000 Black, Brown, and immigrant workers - deliveristas - in New York City. Their everyday business has come to rely on unfair and dangerous labor practices, purposely confusing fee structures, and privacy-threatening data usage. Deliveristas, restaurant owners, and consumers across the city agree: the time has come for delivery apps to stop putting profits over people. Using laws like the Car Wash Licensing Law as models, the Delivery Justice Now! proposal would require food app delivery companies (UberEats, Doordash/Caviar, Postmates, Relay, GrubHub/Seamless, etc.) to obtain a license from DCWP in order to operate in New York City.

The Delivery Justice Now! proposal would require all app delivery companies to:

• Provide full and fair payment for all work done
• Provide complete transparency for all stakeholders
• Provide key worker protections
• Establish a fund for compensation in cases of injury or death
• Provide or service all essential tools
• Comply with consumer and business data protections
• Keep and produce all records

The DJN would also:

• Establish a “Delivery Advocacy Board”
• Separately, through Amit S. Bagga’s proposed $100M “Fair Economy Fund,” the City would publicly fund delivery worker organizing and skills training
• The City must also pursue a minimum 450-mile network of protected bike lanes 

Read the full proposal here. 

Reforming the Uniform Land Use Review Process

As it stands, the ULURP process means that almost all major development and zoning decisions are made on an ad hoc, case-by-case basis, which does not allow for decision-making based on the city’s housing needs as a whole. Further, the current process makes it such that developers and the mayoral administration get to pre-negotiate deals before the community has a say -- it's like they've finished the first course before communities have even looked at the menu. This has led to an environment where developers and profit, not people and need, are given outrageous leverage in our land use process, and the results are clear: a city that is more segregated and gentrified, with mass displacement and economic instability. Some specific key changes that must be included in ULURP reform include:

• Exploring an enforcement mechanism whereby commitments made by developers are actually delivered, so that we can be sure--not just hope--that community benefits are fulfilled
• Ending member deference to remove local politics from land use actions 
• Creating a comprehensive plan that considers the needs of the city as a whole. We are an interconnected city, and the decisions that are made in Gowanus affect our neighbors in Woodside. 
• Generally increasing the hard data available to all decision makers about the project, it’s construction, labor commitments, and other choices and impacts.
• Improving both the notification process and the language justice resources available for public land use hearings. Formalize a feedback process which allows for written comments to be received, acknowledged and taken into account. The community should never feel as though its voice has not been heard. 

With a comprehensive plan, we would be able to focus on creating deeply and permanently affordable housing, and add schools, hospitals, and green space for working people. 

• The comprehensive plan must put people and their true needs at the heart so that it is clear what type of asset needs to be created to solve which problem for whom. Our land use process must be driven by solving actual challenges faced by the people of the city, not driven by the goal to simply build the next shiny new building for profit. 

Our land use process must also redress the legacy of racist redlining by ending exclusionary zoning.

• This includes: increasing deeply and permanently affordable density in areas that are well served by mass transit and not existing LMI and non-white neighborhoods; ending single family zoning; and legalizing accessory dwelling units and basement apartments.

Finally, when it comes to actually housing people in new units of affordable housing, we must make sure that we are not leaving it up to people to figure out the convoluted system for applying for that housing. We do that by co-governing-- investing in community resources that pay tenant organizers and housing advocates to work with BIPOC and immigrants. 

The creation of art is the reflection of the best of humanity. Artists of all modalities must be treated fairly and equitably; art is passion but it is also work. Too often the works that transport audiences out of their troubles are also the first to crumble under economic strain and lose their funding. We must protect the artists who create the productions we center so highly in society yet simultaneously so egregiously undervalue. 

• Value the artist as much as the art. We place art in the highest echelons of society through grand awards and spectacle, but so rarely honor the artists themselves. We must further incorporate art and cultural education into our DOE schools, and do so in a way that robustly fosters value around the artists and creators.
• Equity across all art modalities. As with most things, the artist realm must navigate internal castes. As a Councilmember, I will support policy and legislation that enforces equitable pay of artists and creators; be they dancers or actors or musicians or painters. Pay must reflect the calibre of work, not the societal value of a specific modality. 
• Centering folk, indigenous, and other cultural art. We cannot repeat the mistakes of the past by advancing the equity of only sub-sects of the population deemed admissible; when we demand respect for artists, we demand respect for all artists. Too often we ask the keepers of their history to present their art for free under the guise of cultural exploration. These artists, too, deserve to be paid, and paid fairly. Specifically, we must honor the original stewards of this land, the Lenape people.
• Create and expand public space for artists. Artists must be at the table during community-based rezoning decisions and other public space allocations. There is ample opportunity to create cost-effective arts space for dancers and other artists within currently empty buildings and open space throughout the city, and we must aggressively pursue this avenue as a part of my plan to activate unused public space alongside housing justice. We also must expand the busking certification program so that artists aside from musicians can apply for certification.

The philosophical/intellectual basis of fighting for social justice is undoing harm and preventing harm and violence. These tenets permeate through all aspects of life, including, of course, to animals. Aspects of animal justice also intersect with addressing climate change and achieving climate justice for marginalized communities. We know by now that efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions will not be met without drastic changes in human diets and curbing the consumption of meat. As a champion for animal rights, I will advocate for:

• Prohibiting the operation of horse-drawn carriages. Even with the incremental changes that have been put into place to help ensure the safety and welfare of our carriage horses, I believe that the ultimate goal is to end this practice. Laws that have been passed to improve conditions have not materialized in any change because they are nearly impossible to enforce. As we continue the fight to prohibit carriage horses, I will work to improve their day-to-day lives and give them the welfare and protection that they need to live full and healthy lives. 
• Banning the sale of fur. Fur farms breed and confine animals in tiny, filthy cages where they suffer intense stress and unimaginable cruelty. This practice is completely unnecessary, as there are ethical alternatives to fur which are not only stylish and warm but environmentally friendly. We must pass the current bill proposed in the Council, which will ban the sale of new apparel products using real animal fur. 
• Increasing Funding for Animal Care Centers (ACC) and Independent Animal Rescue Organizations. ACCs are open admission shelters required by law that accept every animal brought through its doors, whether arriving due to homelessness, family crisis, abuse, abandonment, or even from no-kill shelters. Their funding from the Council was cut by $3 million over the past year, despite their contribution to reducing the amount of surrenders over the past few years. When the moratorium on evictions eventually ends, surrenders are expected to increase, and an inadequately funded ACC will become completely overwhelmed.
• Pursuing a More Humane City: Pet Friendly Housing. The impact a companion animal can have on one’s mental health--particularly those living in challenging circumstances-- cannot be overstated. Yet our current housing policy tears people apart from their pets. We need a housing policy that expands affordable pet friendly housing options as well as the ability of those experiencing homelessness and victims of domestic violence to seek refuge in shelters with their pets. Keeping people and companion animals together reduces the burden on animal shelters and allows New Yorkers to stay in their homes. By not providing shelter to those with pets, New York City is not meeting its legal obligation to find shelter to all those who need it. We must utilize one of our existing shelter assets to be a designated shelter for people with pets.
• Promoting plant-based diets in schools and hospitals for a healthier planet and population. The City, with the $20+ billion it spends on contracts, has enormous buying power. The City Council should pass a law prohibiting the Department of Education and NYC Health + Hospitals from purchasing meat from factory farms, which are inhumane and emit enormous amounts of greenhouse gases. Diverting money from purchasing meat could also mean that school and hospital meals become increasingly plant-based and, ultimately, healthier and better for the environment. In situations where meat is purchased, it can be done so from small farms that treat animals humanely.

• Create a dedicated Sub-committee for Students with Disabilities in the City Council

• Sponsor legislation to codify an aspirational employment target for people with disabilities in all NYC governmental agencies.

• Combat Sub Minimum Wage for people with Disabilities by ensuring employers abide by local minimum wage laws.

• Expand Local law 28 to require Community Boards and Elected officials to include information regarding accessibility for people with disabilities.

• Modernize AAR reservations by creating a mobile application for users and expand AAR operations to enable same day reservations.​

• Expand ADA accessibility by installing elevators and escalators across all NYC Subways and repair any existing ones that no longer function.

• Expand Access to Cultural Institutions by sponsoring legislation that requires no cost entry or deeply reduced prices for people with disabilities.