'Our Community Suffers' Amid Coronavirus, Say Black Officials

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK — A Who's Who of Brooklyn’s black elected officials demanded the city and state provide desperately-needed relief for lives and livelihoods in their communities hit by the coronavirus.

They sent a letter Wednesday to Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio painting the pandemic's outsized impact on black communities already suffering under health care, housing and education disparities.

"Black people are dying at a higher rate than the rest of New York while making up the majority of frontline workers keeping the state afloat," they wrote. "This disproportionate impact demands a commensurate response and is why we write today to demand that New York immediately convene a task force to specifically address the Emergency, Relief, Recovery, and Rebuilding needs of black New Yorkers in Central and South Brooklyn."

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The letter bears the signatures of 17 members of the Brooklyn Black Elected Officials Coalition. They range from city Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams — who together have worked to highlight poor conditions in nursing homes amid the pandemic — to Congressman Hakeem Jeffries.

The coronavirus epidemic is a fire that needs to be extinguished, with an eye toward rebuilding the house, the letter states. It proposes a "Lizzie Plan" — Elizabeth Jennings Graham Community Investment Plan, named after a teacher whose efforts helped desegregate the city's trolleys in the 1800s — with specific recommendations.

Those include expanded testing, detailed data on the outbreak's impact on black communities, relief for black-owned businesses, housing affordability and stability, among others.

"These extraordinary times have exposed how porous the safety nets for our communities are; we demand these holes be filled," the letter states. "Every day this net remains weak, our community suffers."

Cuomo on Thursday echoed many of the letter's points during his daily coronavirus news conference. He said black and Latino communities in New York City appear to have borne the virus' brunt, in part because of disparities and many essential workers hail from those communities.

"We are going to do more testing in African-American and Latino communities," a slide stated during his conference.

Cuomo said he'll work with Jeffries and Brooklyn congresswomen Yvette Clarke and Nydia Velazquez to help turn churches into testing sites.

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