35th District Candidate Profile: Jelani Mashariki

In the interest of giving locals a clearer view of the community members running for the 35th District City Council seat, The Nabe has profiled each of the five Democratic candidates. Without a Republican running for the spot, whomever wins the Democratic primary on Sept. 10 takes the abdicated seat, representing Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, Prospect Heights, Bedford-Stuyvesant and parts of Crown Heights. Check back next week for the next candidate profile in our five-part series.

Before a 35th City Council District candidate’s debate on Wednesday, candidate Jelani Mashariki walked around the room and shook attendees’ hands, calling them “brother” or “sister,” and sometimes adding, “Good to see you.” Meanwhile, Sandra Ford, a Clinton Hill resident, handed out Mashariki’s campaign fliers in front of St. John’s Fire Baptized Holiness Church on Fulton Street, where the debate was held.

“He’s great,” Ford said. “He always speaks out for people in the community.”

Mashariki, born and raised in Brooklyn, told the Nabe he’s running for office for that reason – to provide better services for his community. For him, political involvement is a way of life. He said he followed in the footsteps of his father, uncle and mother – all social justice and educational activists.

His passion for advocacy started internationally. He studied in Senegal, volunteered with Americorps right out of Brooklyn College and later founded the Global Block Foundation, a worldwide program that uses hip-hop to encourage youth, economic and cultural developers to make changes in their communities. With Global Block, he has traveled to 17 countries and held workshops on issues ranging from sustainable living to police-community relations.

Yet he always found himself back in Brooklyn, providing services in his home borough. Since 2010, he has served as the director of the Pamoja House Next Step Men’s Shelter in Bedford-Stuyvesant, run by the non-profit Black Veterans for Social Justice, founded by Mashariki’s father. He returned to the shelter after working as its operations manager from 1996 to 2007, and then taking a break to work as a Cultural Ambassador for the U.S. State Department.

“Growing up in Brooklyn, I understood the ills of society, being from activist parents,” Mashariki said. “Now it’s me doing the services.”

At the debate, Mashariki boomed into the microphone, “Jelani Mashariki – Housing is the number one issue.” During his tenure as operations manager at Pamoja House, he explained to The Nabe, he met with at least 30,000 homeless people. He recognized that long-time residents of the district could no longer afford to live in the area as new residents moved in, and even some of his own friends were entering the shelter system. It was then he realized that stronger measures were needed to provide better housing services and prevent people from becoming homeless.

“The services that were needed weren’t just for those who were in homeless shelters,” he said.

Mashariki argued that landlords must be held accountable for failure to maintain their buildings, as too many property owners allow their property to deteriorate in a move to force tenants to leave so they can hike rents. “People are being displaced at a rapid pace, and we need more HPD inspectors to be out there,” he said during the debate.

He added that the City Council should support state representatives wh0 attempt to pass legislation that would institute home rule, a policy that would allow local Council members to decide on rent stabilization policies. He also advocated raising the income eligibility level for the Senior Citizen Rent Increase Exemption (SCRIE), from $27,000 to about $40,000, to help the elderly afford housing.

Besides housing and homelessness, education is another central issue in Mashariki’s campaign. He opposes running two school programs in one building, known as co-location. Currently, P.S. 287 on Navy Street shares a building with Community Roots Charter School, and charter school franchise Success Academy will move into Dr. Susan S. McKinney Secondary School of the Performing Arts on Park Avenue in the fall.

“I think any time you have to share a building, you reduce the resources available to students,” Mashariki said, adding that the co-location arrangement creates an “us-against-them” mentality.

If elected, Mashariki would also push back against inBloom, a new program which issues city public school students’ personal data to a private company, which in turn uses the data to compile a database for businesses that contract with the schools. Mashariki said he believes it is unfair that students’ parents cannot opt out of the program.

“These issues are not political issues,” said Mashariki, who attended public schools: P.S. 321, M.S. 51, Brooklyn Technical High School and Brooklyn College. His 12-year-old daughter attends P.S. 11 in Clinton Hill. “They are personal issues for me. For me, it’s always been about public education. I have a vested interest in these policies.”

Hurricane Sandy relief efforts were also a large part of Mashariki’s life. When the hurricane hit, Mashariki opened the Pamoja House Next Step Men’s Shelter to an influx of people evacuated from other shelters, according to Wendy McClinton, the CEO of Black Veterans for Social Justice, where Mashariki works as an organizer.

“We had close to 400 people in that shelter,” McClinton said. “He had to not only be director, but he had to have compassion and know-how. Everyone still had to be dealt with in the same manner and in the same way.”

After the hurricane, Mashariki organized one of Occupy Sandy’s headquarters in the Church of St. Luke and St. Matthew on Clinton Avenue between Atlantic Avenue and Fulton Street.  There, he gathered donations and coordinated their delivery to the neighborhoods hardest hit by the hurricane. Working with others involved in the movement who brought a range of skills to the table, he discovered the importance of accessing social capital in the 35th district.

“If everyone donated six hours every six months to sharing their skills, we would have more educated, knowledgeable people in the district, less social and economic boundaries and knowledge of opportunities,” Mashariki said.

To achieve this, he suggested that district residents should offer free classes in schools on subjects they are knowledgeable about, similar to the educational TED talks. He also thinks participatory budgeting – in which community members directly decide how to spend part of a public budget – is a good idea for the 35th district.

“No matter what your socioeconomic background, you have a vote and that vote means something,” Mashariki said of the program.

Mashariki has raised more than $36,000 for his campaign, lagging behind Olanike Alabi, who raised more than $41,000, Ede Fox, who has raised about $81,000, and Laurie Cumbo, with more than $100,000 raised. The only candidate with fewer donations is F. Richard Hurley, who raised about $7,800.

Mashariki, who grew up in Park Slope, moved to Crown Heights, then Fort Greene and now lives in Clinton Hill, believes one of his greatest campaign strengths is his roots in the district.

“I am a leaf off the branch of the tree that grows in Brooklyn,” he said.