One of Very Few Lifelong Black Residents of Lower Manhattan Elected District Leader
November’s round of elections achieved a little-noticed local milestone. Longtime activist and member of Community Board 1 Mariama James won her race for a District Leader seat, representing Lower Manhattan. A District Leader is an unsalaried, elected official who represents a portion of an Assembly District, and essentially ensures that a political party is being governed democratically. Usually, there is one District Leader for every Assembly District. But the Manhattan Democratic Party splits Assembly Districts into multiple parts and mandates two district leader seats for each: one male and one female.
The catchment that Ms James represents falls entirely within Community District 1, a collection of neighborhoods encompassing 1.5 square miles, bounded roughly by Canal, Baxter, and Pearl Streets, and the Brooklyn Bridge. Her zone is weighted toward the eastern half of the District. The western portion is represented by Battery Park City resident Vittoria Farrielo. Ms. James is the first Black woman ever to be elected as a District Leader in Lower Manhattan.
Speaking at a recent rally focused on affordable housing, Ms. James said, “I want to say something explicitly and emphatically. I am known to be the last black lifelong resident in this neighborhood, surviving since 1970. I am also the first Black District Leader in this community.”
“I’m additionally a September 11th survivor,” she continued. “My parents were September 11th survivors. My father died from a September 11th-related disease. He wanted me to do this. My mother is a Stage Four cancer survivor, because she worked at the Deutsche Bank Building,” within the World Trade Center complex. “My children suffer from conditions they shouldn’t have at this age. My friends’ children are suffering from cancer.”
“On my birthday in 2006,” Ms. James recalled, “my friend and neighbor, Allen Tannenbaum, who also happened to be a famous photographer, told me he was doing a photo spread called ‘9/11: Still Killing.’ He said he wanted to come and photograph my family and friends, with our medications. With the exceptions of me and my children, every person in that spread, including my father, has since died.”
“People here continue get sick and fight for their lives on a daily basis, and they keep dying,” Ms. James said. “At the same time, they have to fight to maintain their housing. They are housing insecure, because they are paying cancer bills while also being pushed out by gentrification.”
“We are about to face the largest housing crisis since 2008,” she predicted. “And they want to displace us and send us into the outer boroughs. Because that’s where low-income people, middle-income people, working-class people, people of color, always get relegated to. They say, ‘we want to build you affordable housing, we just need to build it over there.’”
“I am literally from here,” Ms. James concluded. “I want to stay here. If anybody has a right to age in place, it is September 11th survivors and first responders. If you want to build a few units of affordable housing elsewhere, don’t do it in my name or tell me you did it for me. This is where I belong.”