Working Families

When S.J. Jung first came to America, he found help from a Flushing-based organization that supports new immigrants — then got involved and rose to become the group’s Executive Director. In this position and as a successful small businessman, S.J. has been working to improve his community for over 20 years. Now he’s running for City Council to make sure the area’s future development puts the needs of middle-class residents first. S.J. would be the first Korean American on the City Council, and a local paper even compared his campaign to “Obama’s surprise inroad during last year’s presidential election…”

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A Staten Island native, Debi Rose has spent her whole life organizing to strengthen North Shore communities. She has served for nearly two decades as Executive Director of a highly successful dropout prevention program, while also fighting for better health care, transportation, and environmental conditions. When Debi ran for this seat in a special election earlier this year, she lost by just 300 votes. If she wins this time, she’ll be Staten Island’s first African-American elected official and the first woman to represent the borough on the City Council.

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Born in the Dominican Republic, Ydanis Rodriguez came to Washington Heights at the age of 18 and has been fighting ever since to expand opportunities in his community. After working his way through college, he became a founding teacher at a local school that prioritizes quality education for immigrants, and has since organized his neighbors to secure better school facilities, protect tenants rights, improve language services in health care facilities, and keep public transit affordable.

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Daniel Dromm has been a Queens public school teacher for 25 years, and a civil rights activist for even longer. He is known throughout NYC for his leadership in the LGBT community, and has fostered cross-cultural engagement and understanding in one of the most diverse Council Districts in the city. Helen Sears, the incumbent Daniel is challenging, has been MIA while the community struggles with overcrowded schools, hospital closings, congestion and economic challenges — but she found time to vote to extend her own term limits. Now Dromm has a chance to make history as Queens’ first openly gay elected official.

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Brad Lander is a longtime supporter of the Working Families Party and one of the leading experts on sustainable growth and fair development in New York City. As the former director of both the Pratt Center for Community Development and the Fifth Avenue Committee, Brad has helped thousands of New York City families find and stay in affordable homes, and led the fight to pass laws that ended city giveaways to developers. Brad is also a proud public school parent who has been endorsed by dozens of local PTA leaders. His record of results will make him an invaluable addition to the City Council.

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Mark Winston Griffith has spent 24 years building institutions and organizing in Crown Heights and Bedford-Stuyvesant, and has been out in front of progressive issues his entire career. In addition to co-founding a community development credit union, and organizing tenants, street vendors and women on public assistance to fight for their rights, he most recently led campaigns to fight predatory lending practices and foreclosures. Until June of 2009, Mark served as Executive Director of the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy, where he fought for the rights of working families on issues like paid sick leave, universal health care, and strengthening the labor movement. You’d be hard pressed to find a more effective ally for working families in New York; Mark’s years of experience and his extensive progressive network will make him an invaluable addition to the City Council.
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