Desi Talk

www.desitalk.com – that’s all you need to know 7 CITY VIEWS July 18, 2025 Community Op-Ed: It Takes a City: Bringing New York City One Step Closer to Universal Childcare for Low-Income Families July 14, 2025 T he best way to make the American Dream a real- ity for all NewYorkers is by making our city more affordable for working-class families. Childcare costs have skyrocketed across NewYork City, put- ting pressure on monthly bills and family budgets. Working families are struggling to afford these high costs, resulting in many leaving the five boroughs. Parents deserve better, and our administration is delivering for them. Last week, we announced an additional $80 million investment, as part of our recently passed “Best Budget Ever,” to support working families and ensure that every child has access to early childhood education programs. Here’s how that money breaks down: For too long, universal pre-K wasn’t fully universal, since it left out students with disabilities. But we are changing that. As part of our “Best Budget Ever,” we are investing another $70 million towards supporting pre-K special education students who require occupational therapy, speech therapy, and other related services. We are also investing $10 million in a groundbreak- ing pilot program to provide free childcare for children aged two and under. If successful, this program could put NewYork City on the path to universal childcare for low- income families. Affordable childcare means that families can stay in the city, and it means that parents can continue to work. We know that when mothers leave the workforce to care for a child, they forgo $145,000 in earnings throughout their lifetime on average. If parents are forced to leave the workforce, their families struggle, and our economy is weakened. The size of your paycheck or your bank account shouldn’t determine whether your child gets the childcare you and they need. This issue is personal to me. My mom couldn’t afford childcare, even though she worked three jobs to put food on the table for her six kids. My sister raised me and my siblings because the city was not there to help us when we needed it. That’s why we made this budget one that will deliver for working-class families — one that would have helped my mom and my family when we were grow- ing up. Affordable childcare and early childhood education is more than just a babysitter, it’s essential for a strong society, a thriving and equitable economy, and the devel- opment of our kids. No child deserves to start their life a step behind. That’s why we have made historic investments in early childhood education time and time again. We have dedi- cated almost $170 million more in funding for early child- hood education permanent in our city budget, meaning critical programs like pre-K special education and the expansion of our citywide 3-K program will be supported forever. And we have driven down the cost of subsidized childcare by over 90 percent. Thanks to our efforts, a fam- ily earning $55,000 a year went from spending $55 a week on childcare in 2022 to just $4.80 a week today. Our administration understands that in NewYork, it takes a city to raise a child. We are expanding childcare to younger children and ensuring that families have access to childcare across the five boroughs because we know that to make NewYork City the best place to raise a family we must make childcare more affordable and universal. That is exactly what we are doing — every day, every- where, as we continue to deliver for NewYorkers. By NewYork City Mayor Eric Adams Young Black Voters Are Trying Out Republicans — And Progressives A long list of NewYork’s Black pas- tors and politicians endorsed former governor Andrew M. Cuomo in the run-up to the city’s Democratic primary for mayor last month. But it wasn’t surprising that free- lance journalist Anthony Conwright and many other younger Black NewYorkers ignored those endorsements and chose state Assembly member Zohran Mamdani instead. Conwright backed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) during the 2016 and 2020 Democratic primaries and voted for Kamala Harris in last year’s general elec- tion but found her campaign wanting. Mamdani “made the case that his poli- cies are a moral imperative,” Conwright, 39, told me. It has been well-chronicled that more African Americans, particularly younger ones, are voting Republican than in the past. But there are growing signs of another crucial shift - the younger African Americans who remain Democrats are dissatisfied with the party’s center-left establishment and increasingly open to progressive candidates and stances. The days of center-left Democrats such as Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden winning primaries by overwhelmingly carrying the Black vote might be over. That increases the possibility of leftist candidates such as Mamdani winning mayoral and congressional primaries and perhaps even the 2028 Democratic presi- dential nomination. Most polls don’t include enough Black Democrats to allow for age comparisons. But there are several clear indicators of a generational divide. Though Sanders, a socialist like Mamdani, struggled to win over Black voters in the 2016 and 2020 Democratic primaries, he did much better among the younger bloc. Polls show that younger African Americans are more open than their older counterparts to reduc- ing police funding, abolishing Immigra- tion and Customs Enforcement, allowing transgender athletes to compete in sports according to their chosen gender identity and other progressive positions. Surveys during Biden’s tenure consis- tently showed younger African American Democrats were much less enthusiastic about him than older ones. In the New York race, Black voters ages 50 and older supported Cuomo over Mamdani by a 64-36 margin, according to an exit poll conducted by Change Research. But about 70 percent of Black voters younger than 50 favored Mamdani. “Zohran has largely stood up for Palestinian liberation, before and while running, so I know he won’t waver in the face of political pressure when it comes to other pressing issues of justice and human rights,” said 39-year-old Andom Ghebreghiorgis, a NewYorker who works in education. How are these shifts happening, par- ticularly at the same time - some young Black voters moving right, others left and perhaps even some Mamdani-Trump voters? One explanation is that Black America is changing broadly in ways that are also showing up in election results. Though there was never a monolithic “Black community,” that’s even more true today. There are growing numbers of Black Americans who live in the suburbs, not cities, aren’t married to other Black people, don’t belong to churches and/or weren’t born in the United States. The center-left establishment wing of the Democratic Party has strong ties with older Black pastors and community lead- ers, such as the Rev. Al Sharpton in New York. Many older Black voters credit the Democratic Party for ending segregation and fighting for civil rights in the 1950s and ’60s. But those connections and his- tories aren’t as electorally potent among younger African Americans who weren’t alive in the early days of integration, don’t live in heavily Black areas, and aren’t involved with churches and civic groups such as the NAACP and Urban League. My relatives “liked that he was an im- migrant from Uganda and spoke about the importance of his African identity to him,” said Ghebreghiorgis, whose parents were born in Eritrea. So though Black people are still more Democratic than other ethnic and racial groups, they are increasingly divided along progressive, center-left, anti-Trump Republican and pro-Trump Republican, like the rest of the electorate. Younger Black people in particular are comfortable voting for a Republican - or a nontradi- tional Democrat such as Mamdani. Another explanation for young Black voters drifting away from the Democratic establishment is that they feel that voting for traditional Democratic candidates hasn’t resulted in much progress for Black people, particularly in recent years. A Black voter younger than 45 has watched Barack Obama go from being an exciting, insurgent candidate to a fairly cautious president, and the Black Lives Matter movement fizzle as Democratic Party of- ficials did little to advance its agenda. “The experience of Black Americans calls into question the institutions that this country holds most sacred,” Con- wright said. He added, “I do not believe that people should die on the streets in the wealthiest country in the world be- cause they do not have health care. …The history of Black Americans demonstrates why there needs to be government inter- vention in providing the basic necessities for Americans to live: health care, educa- tion, public transportation.” In an interview with TheGrio, a news site that focuses on African Americans, 36-year-old NewYork author Frederick T. Joseph said, “What has been happening for generations hasn’t been working at large for us. … So we’re primed for a new vision. Zohran Mamdani spoke to that new vision.” I don’t want to overstate these trends or exaggerate their importance. There are plenty of Black Democrats younger than 45 who don’t back progressive candidates in primaries. In general elections, the overwhelming majority of younger Black voters (about 83 percent in 2024) still support the Democratic candidate. Also, younger Black Americans vote at much lower rates (around 50 percent) than their older counterparts (close to 70 percent). So in a Democratic primary, you’d rather be the candidate backed by older Black folks rather than younger ones. Because of this age disparity in voting patterns, it is almost certainly the case that Cuomo won more Black votes than Mamdani in the recent primary. But we are in a period of change. The days of a candidate exciting Black vot- ers across ideological and generational lines, as Obama did in 2008, might be over forever. That’s probably bad news for the Democratic Party, whose path to 90 percent of the Black vote will keep getting more complicated. These shifts might be good for Black voters, though. Many Democratic politi- cians act as if appealing to a few pastors and Black leaders in their 60s and 70s is akin to campaigning to all African Ameri- cans. That was always a lazy approach - and today it’s clearly not working. The entire Black electorate, young and old, religious and secular, conservative and progressive, might finally start getting the attention it deserves from politicians. - TheWashington Post By Perry Bacon Jr.