DANIEL DROMM, Democrat for City Council

Labels: Endorsements, Press

From Western Queens Gazette: by Thomas Cogan

Community Board 3’s first meeting of 2010 at the board’s usual meeting place, I.S. 227, the Louis Armstrong School in Corona, three politicians introduced themselves and talked. A spokesman for a local ambulance service sought letters of approval for a plan that would expand its territory. There was a new election of board officers. Near the end of the meeting, there was word of a proposal to build an elementary school, while the MTA proposal to eliminate free transit fare for students was not appreciated.

City Councilmember Daniel Dromm was the first politician to the front of the room. New to political office, he first defeated incumbent Helen Sears in a primary race for nomination to the City Council’s 25th district seat then won the November election, where, he acknowledged, his share of the vote was 75 percent. Just after being inaugurated, he was named head of the council Immigration Committee.

Dromm has a 25-year background teaching in city schools and spoke first of educational matters. He noted that the local problem of overcrowded classrooms would be allayed considerably if an arrangement could be effected for public school students to fill 700 seats at the now closed Blessed Sacrament elementary school at 34-20 94th St. “It would be like getting a new school,” he said. He praised the Renaissance Charter School, a K-12 school that has operated at 35-59 81st St. for nearly a decade. Turning to another critical area, he deplored the healthcare situation since the recent closing of three Queens hospitals, saying the closings have had a particularly severe impact on Elmhurst Medical Center, where people in need of treatment often must wait nine or 10 hours just to be admitted. He said that several primary care centers are needed locally, and added that he and Congressmember Joseph Crowley have been trying to gain funds from the federal stimulus package, which might be used toward getting some of those centers.

He said that day laborers, widely seen as a great problem in the vicinity of Roosevelt Avenue, should instead be seen as those “least amongst us” that he learned about in his Catholic youth. Allowing that they have caused some problems, he said that they need community centers to address their situation of being unattached to just about anything. He praised the closing from time to time of 78th Street to make it a play street for children, hailing Board 3 Member Ed Westley for his part in bringing it about. Considering the number of local restaurants, he said that Jackson Heights should stage something like Atlantic Antic in Brooklyn’s Atlantic Avenue neighborhoods. He concluded by saying: “The strength of our community is the diversity of our community.”

Labels: CommunityOrganizing, CulturalAffairs, EconomicDevelopment, Education, Environment, HealthCare, ImmigrantRights, Parks-Playgrounds, Press

From Queens Chronicle: By Michael Lanza

City Council Member Daniel Dromm was elected to serve as Chair of the Immigration Committee. Dromm will also serve on these committees: Education; Cultural Affairs, Libraries, and International Intergroup Relations; Juvenile Justice; Parks; and Veterans.

Labels: CulturalAffairs, Education, ImmigrantRights, JuvenileJustice, LawEnforcement, Parks-Playgrounds, Veterans

From Elmhurst Times: by Jeremy Walsh

Consistently low graduation rates at Grover Cleveland High School in Ridgewood and Long Island City High School and Newtown High School in Elmhurst have placed all three institutions on the list for state and federal funding that would either completely make over the schools or close them entirely.

The state-issued list of 57 schools with graduation rates below 60 percent or consistently low scores on state English and math exams was released last Thursday. It includes 10 schools in Queens.

City Councilman Daniel Dromm’s (D-Jackson Heights) office has scheduled a meeting with Newtown HS staff. Dromm said he opposed closing the school.

“In general, my impression of Newtown has been that ... people were happy with Newtown and I have not heard any problems,” Dromm said, praising the state DOE for informing his office when the report was to be released. “I hope they’ll let us in on what the decision making process is.”

Labels: CommunityOrganizing, Education, Press

From Jackson Heights Times: By Jeremy Walsh

Freshman City Councilman Daniel Dromm (D-Jackson Heights) spent his first week in office adjusting, learning — and dusting.

After an emotional swearing-in with his mother and close friends at City Hall Jan. 1, Dromm, 54, moved into the office of his predecessor, Helen Sears, Jan. 4 only to find workmen were not finished repainting and renovating.

“We used the upstairs conference room of the law office that owns the building,” he said, noting he and his staffers had to do some cleaning after the workers left. “When they did the renovations in the office, dust went all over everything, and I am a neat freak.”

The move into the office was a major shift for Dromm, who taught at PS 199 in Jackson Heights for 25 years. He said he cried when it was time to leave the school. But he said the change would allow him to devote his days to the kind of activism that has occupied his off-hours since 1990.

“This to me is like a second career, an opportunity to do something I always wanted to do, to help my community,” he told the TimesLedger Newspapers in an interview with reporters and the editor. “I feel like right now I have a lot of political capital. We won by a wide margin in both the primary and in the general election. And my contributors were all community people. ... So that’s who I owe things to.”

Not surprisingly, Dromm is making education a priority. He criticized city Schools Chancellor Joel Klein for not including parents and teachers in his decision-making process and for not reducing class sizes.

“We were teaching in the dressing rooms behind the stage, we were teaching in locker rooms,” he said of his experiences in PS 199. “They were holding guidance sessions in stairwells, teaching in the hallways. Why has that never been addressed in the public school system?”

As chairman of the Immigration Committee, Dromm said he will also push for the creation of an immigrant labor center in his district, where day laborers can congregate indoors, sign up on a dry-erase board for available jobs and be offered various city services.

“They can be tracked, the people who give them the jobs can be tracked and when they get ripped off ... it would be just a better way to handle it,” he said, noting he did not want to limit the services to legal immigrants. “I don’t know if it’s our job to check each and every single one of them. When kids come into the public school system, for example, we don’t say you have to be documented.”

Dromm had nothing but praise for Council Speaker Christine Quinn (D-Manhattan), the Council’s first openly lesbian leader and a fellow gay rights activist. She and Dromm got to know each other in 1990 as they canvassed Jackson Heights to help find information on the murder of Julio Rivera, a gay man who was beaten to death.

“You’d have to go late at night, because that’s when these things heat up. And since I knew the bar owners, I was able to turn the music off and we were able to make the announcement,” he said. “We’d meet at 1 o’clock in the morning on the corner of Roosevelt [Avenue] and 74th Street.”

Dromm’s Council district includes Jackson Heights, Elmhurst and Corona.

Labels: CivilRights, Espanol, LawEnforcement, Press

Labels: CivilRights, ImmigrantRights, Press

Jackson Heights, NY, January 25, 2009 -- Council Member Daniel Dromm has been elected by the New York City Council to serve as the Chair of the Immigration Committee. Dromm, an openly gay former public school teacher, has been actively involved in civil rights and community organizing for over two decades. On November 3rd, 2009, Dromm was overwhelmingly elected to serve the 25th District, which has the highest percentage of foreign-born residents (encompassing parts of Jackson Heights , Elmhurst , LeFrak City , Corona , Rego Park, and Woodside).

At a press conference held in Jackson Heights with immigration advocates and community leaders, Council Member Dromm declared, “It doesn’t matter where you come from or how you got here. What matters is where we are going together”.

Council Member Dromm continued, “As committee chairperson, I look forward to addressing the wide array of issues that our immigrants face when they come here. In the City Council, I represent what is perhaps the most diverse, immigrant rich community in the city, if not the world. It is indeed an honor to chair this committee and I thank Speaker Quinn and my colleagues for supporting me in this effort." Dromm, who has Irish roots and speaks Spanish fluently, explained, "What immigrants want is what all New Yorkers want -- the right to pursue happiness and freedom in our great land."

“We are very excited to have Council Member Dromm as the new chair of the Immigration Committee of the NYC Council, not only because he represents Jackson Heights , New York City’s most diverse neighborhood where seven out of ten residents are foreign born, but also because his leadership is rooted in his long-time work fighting for civil rights and dignity for all" said Ana Maria Archila, co-Executive Director of Make the Road NY. "He will bring the wisdom and experience gained from his work as a public school teacher to advance solutions to the drop out crisis and the challenges facing our schools. And his presence truly opens the doors of government to hundreds of thousands of Latino immigrants who are in the process of learning English, who will be able to communicate directly in Spanish with the leader of the Immigration Committee in the Council. Immigrant communities have a real ally and champion today as the chair of the Immigration Committee.”

Ciaran Staunton, co-founder and president of Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform, said, "Daniel Dromm will be a strong advocate for immigrants in New York City , especially in these tough economic times. I have worked with him successfully in the past on local initiatives and I know that Danny's experience makes him the perfect person to lead our efforts to give my fellow immigrants the respect they deserve, and the resources they require."

"Council Member Dromm is a strong choice to lead the Immigration Committee of the City Council" said Seema Agnani, Executive Director of Chhaya CDC. "His experience as a community organizer showcased a determination to increase the participation of immigrants in the democratic process. His recent campaign was successful in capturing the hopes, and addressing the concerns, of many of our newest neighbors. We look forward to working with him on critical issues including improving immigrant housing conditions and advocating for comprehensive immigration reform by the federal government."

"As an immigrant of African descent, I applaud the appointment of Council Member Daniel Dromm, who has been on the forefront of the struggle for inclusion and equality, to be chair of the Immigration Committee," said George Onuorah, founder and CEO of Youths International. "There is no doubt Dromm understands the importance of tolerance and cooperation for the betterment of everyone. There can only be positives and pluses when we unite, for only in unity can we achieve progress."

"A patchwork of immigrants elects an openly gay councilman" is how the New York Times recently described Dromm's election. Among the priorities that Dromm outlined for the Immigration Committee are relieving school overcrowding in communities with large immigrant populations, expanding funding of English-as-a-Second Language programs, improving health care access for immigrants, opening a jobs and community center, improving immigrant housing conditions, supporting federal legislation for the DREAM Act and highlighting the need for comprehensive federal immigration reform.

Labels: CivilRights, ImmigrantRights

Labels: Press

El Diaro/MANUEL E. AVENDAÑO:

Una delegación de concejales neoyorquinos, encabezada por la presidente Christine Quinn, viajará mañana a Puerto Rico para reunirse con la familia de Jorge Steven López Mercado, el joven homosexual de 19 años de edad, que fuera brutalmente asesinado el pasado noviembre.

“El mensaje que queremos enviar al gobernador (Luis Fortuño) es que el resto de los Estados Unidos está viendo este caso y que quiere que se haga justicia”, dijo Quinn, en declaraciones exclusivas a EL DIARIO/LA PRENSA.

La presidente del Concejo Municipal agregó que decidió ir a la isla cuando escuchó acerca del crimen, de lo “increíblemente brutal que fue contra una víctima tan joven”.

Quinn expresó que se ha sentido “muy molesta” por la manera en que se ha manejado el caso, con el silencio del gobernador y por el trato que se le dado a la víctima “casi como a un criminal”. “La forma de tratar este caso ha sido ofensiva y atroz”, dijo Quinn.

Por su parte, la concejal Melissa Mark-Viverito (D-Manhattan) dijo a este diario que los concejales de Nueva York se unirán a otros funcionarios electos de Chicago, donde la comunidad puertorriqueña ha recaudado fondos que serán entregados a los familiares de López Mercado.

Los ediles Rosie Méndez (D-Manhattan), Danny Dromm (D-Queens) y Jimmy Van Bramer (D-Queens) integran también la delegación.

“Queremos que el gobernador entienda que el silencio no es aceptable”, dijo Mark-Viverito. Agregó que pese a que desde el 2002 existe una ley contra los crímenes de odio en Puerto Rico –firmada por la entonces gobernadora Sila Calderón- “hasta el momento no se ha llevado un caso a la corte”.

El cadáver de López Mercado fue hallado el 13 de noviembre en la ciudad de Cavey. Había sido decapitado, desmembrado y parcialmente quemado.

Labels: CivilRights, CommunityOrganizing, Espanol, Press

Daniel Dromm and members of the Keltic Dreams Irish dance group performed “Y.M.C.A.” at his inauguration party on Sunday.

Huddled with aides last week in a room upstairs from his future district office, which the incumbent he defeated in the Democratic primary had yet to clear out, City Councilman Daniel Dromm ironed out the final details of his inauguration party.

They discussed when the bagpipes would chime in, who would sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” and which line would be recited by each of the four judges administering the oath of office. “And when the show begins, we’ll do the drag queens and then Randy Jones,” he said, referring to the original cowboy in the Village People.

Mr. Dromm’s choice of entertainment was at once a personal indulgence (“I’m a fan of early disco,” he explained) and a tongue-in-cheek statement of his sexuality. He is the first openly gay elected official to represent Jackson Heights, Queens, a neighborhood known for its diversity of people and cuisines that enjoys a more obscure distinction as a haven for gay men and lesbians.

At first glance, it might seem incongruous that gay people would find acceptance in a place that is home to large populations of South Asian and South American immigrants, who usually hold conservative values. In the days leading up to the general election, Mr. Dromm’s Republican opponent, a Bangladeshi Muslim named Mujib Rahman, tried to turn his rival’s sexual orientation into a campaign issue, denouncing Mr. Dromm as a “radical gay activist.”

Still, Mr. Dromm, 54, won with nearly 75 percent of the vote.

Jackson Heights was not always this way. Mr. Dromm, a veteran gay activist and former teacher at an elementary school, recalled that a police helicopter hovered overhead, in case violence broke out, when the neighborhood held Queens’s first gay pride parade in 1993. Tensions had been running high since a gay man from Colombia, Julio Rivera, was stabbed to death in a bias attack three years earlier.

What Mr. Rivera’s killing did, though, was expose the divisions and intersections within the many worlds that define Jackson Heights. Problems still persist: Just last month, a gay man reported to the police that he was beaten by bouncers at a Mexican restaurant on Roosevelt Avenue. But for gay people and Latinos, at least, “it’s not a matter of coexisting, but a matter of how much they overlap,” said Joe Rollins, 48, a political science professor at the City University of New York who is gay and has lived in Jackson Heights for eight years.

It is exactly this sense of mash-up multiculturalism that many gays said had attracted them to Jackson Heights, along with its vast subway network and its housing stock, ample and relatively affordable apartments with luxurious gardens and ornate architectural flourishes.

That it has a gay subculture “was a sort of bonus, but not a deciding factor,” said Alfonso Quiroz, 37, who four years ago began organizing monthly dinners that now draw more than 30 people — most of them gay men, but also some lesbians and a heterosexual couple.

“It was never about your ethnic background, your religious background, your sexual orientation, or about being rich or poor,” said Mr. Quiroz, a spokesman for Con Edison who has lived in Jackson Heights since 2003 with his partner, Jeff Simmons, 45. “It was really about feeling comfortable here.”

Glenn Magpantay, 41, and his partner, Christopher Goeken, 42, moved to Jackson Heights from Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, in 2004 because “we wanted a place where we could raise a family,” said Mr. Magpantay, a civil rights lawyer. He is of Filipino descent, Mr. Goeken is white and they have an adopted son, a 3-year-old black boy named Malcolm.

“To us,” Mr. Magpantay said over empanadas at a Colombian restaurant on 37th Avenue, “living in a racially diverse neighborhood was very important.”

Gay men said they were not afraid to hold hands with their partners while walking the streets. And while there are gay bars and clubs on Roosevelt Avenue — patrons described the scene as twice as fun as Manhattan’s, but half the price — there is no sense of an enclave like there is in Chelsea, where gay people seem to inhabit a world of their own, they said.

“Jackson Heights happens to have a lot of gays, but it’s not a gay neighborhood,” said Jeffrey Reich-Hale, 35, a hotel sales director who was eating at a neighborhood restaurant. “We have our problems, but you really feel like everyone belongs everywhere.” In recent years at the Queens Gay Pride Parade, which Mr. Dromm helped found, sidewalks have been packed with immigrant men, women and children cheering as gays from Colombia, Ecuador and Peru pass by, waving their countries’ flags. It is the city’s largest gay parade outside Manhattan and it has “a real neighborhood feeling, with people coming out with their folding chairs, their coolers, like you’d see on Memorial Day,” said City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn, who is a lesbian and has been one of the parade’s most loyal participants.

But at his inauguration party on Sunday, in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, Mr. Dromm made sure to point out that as a councilman, he would not embrace “a gay agenda,” but causes that are important to the people he represents, like traffic and parking improvements, additional parkland and the creation of a day laborer hiring site. (His district also includes parts of Corona, Woodside, Elmhurst and East Elmhurst, which has a sizable Chinese population.)

“I believe that our struggles as progressives, as gays, as immigrants, as Latinos, as South Asians, as African-Americans, as Asians, as Muslims, as human beings, is one and the same,” he told an audience of about 600 people. “We are fighting to make people’s lives better.”

Written by Fernanda Santos. Published New York Times January 15th, 2010

Labels: CommunityOrganizing, Press, Progressive

City Council Member Daniel Dromm joined union and community members will pledge not to patronize Amish Market Tribeca until the owners demonstrate a reversal of their stand against workers rights. Dromm was joined by the leadership of UFCW Local 1500, the Building and Construction Trades Council of New York, the New York Central Labor Council, and New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn.

Labels: CommunityOrganizing, EconomicDevelopment, Unions

City Council Member Daniel Dromm (D/WF-Jackson Heights) encourages you to donate to the victims of the recent earthquake in Haiti. Every dollar contributed can help save a life.

The musician Wyclef Jean has a long-standing charity program to help Haitians - Yele Haiti. Please consider making donations to Yele Haiti or the American Red Cross.

Here are the links:

American Red Cross

Yele Haiti

Labels: CommunityOrganizing, Grassroots