Uptown Voices | Oscar Romero: Running for Congress is not a matter of choice, it's a matter of survival

In this episode of Uptown Voices, hosts Octavio Blanco and Led Black engage in a deep conversation with Oscar Romero, a candidate for Congress from New York City. They discuss the challenges facing the 13th Congressional District, the importance of community engagement, and the need for a new direction in politics. Oscar shares his experiences in civic engagement and highlights the systemic issues affecting marginalized communities. Oscar emphasizes the need for grassroots movements and community-driven solutions to create meaningful change.

The conversation also touches on the significance of Latino leadership and unity in the face of shared struggles and introduces author Maria Perez-Brown an Emmy Award winning writer, producer and executive, currently serving as Head of Kids & Family for TIME Studios. She was born in Dorado, Puerto Rico and currently lives in New York. Previously, Maria was Head of Programming for NuvoTV and is the founder of Brown Kids Media. She has developed content for leading television brands, including Nickelodeon, Nick Jr., Disney, Sesame Workshop and Nelvana.

Maria is co-editor of the newly released Latino Leaders Speak: Personal Stories of Struggle and Triumph, Volume II — a powerful new book documenting 25 personal stories from Latino leaders who have shaped American society across government, education, business, culture, and the arts.

Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Uptown Voices and Guest Introduction
03:16 Oscar Romero's Political Vision and Challenges
05:54 Community Engagement and Civic Responsibility
08:46 Addressing Systemic Issues in the 13th Congressional District
11:22 Youth Movement and Political Change
13:54 The Role of Corporations in Politics
16:56 Healthcare, Education, and Housing Challenges
19:28 Building a Better Future Together
22:08 Campaign Strategies and Community Involvement
29:27 Reflections on Community Engagement
29:47 Connecting with Local Leadership
30:49 Cultural Connections and Family Traditions
33:47 Introducing Maria Perez-Brown
34:27 The Importance of Latino Leadership
36:11 Personal Stories of Struggle and Triumph
39:39 Lessons in Leadership
41:15 Navigating Latino Identity
47:00 The Need for Latino Unity
48:29 Promoting the Book and Future Aspirations

Creators and Guests

Host

Led Black

Host

Octavio Blanco

What is Uptown Voices?

A podcast focused on the Uptown neighborhoods of Inwood, Washington Heights and Harlem. Our neighborhoods have a voice and we want to be heard and felt. We love Uptown.

Each episode will elevate the people here who are making a difference in the life of this community. We’re also committed to “real talk” that seeks solutions that improve the quality of life in our beautiful Uptown neighborhoods.

Oscar Romero (00:00)
I am very proud to be part of this generation of young people from across the city and really the country that are running to do something, to change something. But I got to tell you, to me, this is not a matter of choice. It's a matter of survival. the day I decided that I was going to run for Congress was when ICE came to my house. They knocked on my door. The goons with guns.

claiming to be the police line, saying that, you know, just trying to intimidate everybody in the building and I'm up and down my building telling everybody not to open the door, that they can't know, that they do not have the right to do that. And as I'm educating people in my community about what are their rights, I hate to admit that even if people know their rights, that doesn't protect them from being abused. When I see kids...

in the neighborhood where live that have to see how they kidnapped their parents and they were left on the streets. Families completely destroyed across the nation because they have to figure out how to pay the living expenses. They're dealing with a trauma. They don't know what happened with their loved ones. Their loved ones have been lied to. And the majority of the people they're kidnapping have committed no crime.

Octavio Blanco (01:40)
welcome to another episode of Uptown Voices. I'm Octavio Blanco here in Washington Heights. I'm joined by my brother from another mother, Mr. Led Black, also here in Washington Heights. How you doing, Led?

Led Black (01:54)
Tell you.

Doing good, brother, doing good, man. Excited about this episode. Just want to remind everyone to make sure you subscribe, show us that love, This is our show together, all of us, Uptown Voices.

Octavio Blanco (02:07)
That's right, that's right.

Today we have an incredible guest. We're getting into Really really serious politics season. I mean You know our midterms are not until June, but that's gonna be even though it's like negative 13 degrees outside

June is just right around the corner. So that means we need to start to be thinking about who we want to represent us in Congress. And today we have a very special guest. His name is Oscar Romero. He's the current New York City.

chief information officer for the New York City Civic Engagement Commission. And he is running for Congress as a democratic socialist and challenging the incumbent congressman, Adriano Espaillat. Oscar, how you doing? Welcome to the show. How's everything going on your end over in East Harlem?

Oscar Romero (03:02)
Hey, thank you so much for having me. It's such a pleasure to be here. Things are going well. There's lots of things to fight for, lots of topics to talk about, and lots of change to build. So happy to be here in conversation with you all.

Led Black (03:14)
And Oscar, I want, yeah, so Oscar, know, like, let's talk about it, right? Like, this is a big seat, you know, Adharyan Ashbayah is a formidable, you know, politician. He's been, he's worked the circuit. He's gone from, you know, from, you know, from very small to this huge seat. Why do you think it's important at this moment in time to find a new direction?

Octavio Blanco (03:16)
Yeah, go ahead, let.

Oscar Romero (03:36)
Yeah, well, that's a really great question. So, you know, a couple of reasons, right? I mean, I think part of the challenge that we have in our district is how corporations have been able to manage to get their hands into how our politicians get to make choices. So, I mean, for one, I think that poses a number of moral and ethical challenges. know, can we really be trying to create policies to undo the legacies of segregation and inequality that we have in Harlem and across our district?

when our policies are supporting apartheid states or a genocide in Gaza and we're getting funding from lobbies that do that, can we, for example, be advocating for better housing policies when we get funding from real estate lobbies? What does it mean to be cozy up to corporations in the pharmaceutical industry and others when we are actually trying to create universal health care, right? Like we're trying to fight for affordable healthcare that everybody can get access to. there are a lot of...

contradictions in, and I think it is a bigger issue than our Congressman Adriano Epaillat is an issue with the entire electoral system that makes it so that it is not about representing the community challenges that we have and the people of our districts, but really about how much money you have to even be in Congress. You you wouldn't be surprised to know that more than half of our representatives in Congress are millionaires themselves, right? And so when you have these

blatant lack of representation. And then you have other seats where people are not millionaires, but they're still representing corporate interests more than everyday people, then that's a problem. And I believe that's something we have to fight for to change.

Octavio Blanco (05:11)
No, I think that's incredibly important. Our interests as constituents and as people who reside in communities that are often overlooked and often marginalized and currently being attacked by our own government, often we're not being taken into consideration.

I'm not saying that this is the case with our current congressman especially, but I am saying that there needs to be a change so that it's a more community centric approach and more of a people and constituent centric approach than what I think a lot of people seem to be sensing. You have a lot of experience

locally in New York City as the Chief Information Officer of the Civic Engagement Commission. Can you explain a little bit about what you are doing currently and how does that

How does that help you as a potential congressman?

Oscar Romero (06:12)
Yeah, no, thank you so much. Well, you know, I've been working for the city of New York for more than seven years now. I originally started working in the office, what was called the mayor's office or the chief technology officer. And my job was to build a smart city strategy that was going to represent the needs of New Yorkers and not the investment portfolio of companies in the Silicon Valley. And so the way that we did that is simply by putting all the technology aside and then just simply have conversations. And we

decided that as we wanted to start this conversation, we wanted to take a look at them in two different ways. least one, taking a look at what were the indicators of inequality, whether that was systemic inequality, lack of access to infrastructure, poverty, lack of health outcomes. And if you take a look at a map of New York City and you see redlining from the early 1900s, you will see the same neighborhoods that had the highest numbers of death because of COVID-19 in 2020.

If you take a look at the food deserts, you will see the same places. If you take a look at the business ownership of diverse communities, you will see again the same places. And so as we started working, I started working seven years ago in Inwood and Washington Heights and in Brownsville, Brooklyn. And what we did is talk to people. We talked to people with other community-based organizations, Led Black among others, from the community. And then we just talked about the challenges that people were facing and the...

And the experience that you get from actually doing that versus just running on aspirations is significant because, you know, if you talk to the housing people, they're going to tell you housing challenges. If you talk to the health people, they're going to tell you health challenges. But if you bring everybody together into these spaces, then you're going to see the intersectionality of these problems. And then you can see what are the agendas that matter the most for the whole community.

Now granted, as a government agency, you have to do everything. It is not fair to ask somebody, hey, what is your priority? Healthcare or better schools for your children? No, do both, your government, right? And so my job back then was to take all of this community impact, community information around what to change in the neighborhoods and actually challenge the government to do something. I'll give you a couple of examples. In Inwood and Washington Heights, people were very concerned with housing. They were concerned with the rezoning. They were concerned with businesses closing down.

with affordable housing not being protected, with a notion that development didn't mean that the people that currently live here could actually live a better life, and instead meant that rents were gonna go high and people were gonna be displaced. And so we started to work on protecting tenants' rights and housing rights. And another example that I think is very relevant to us was actually in Brownsville, Brooklyn. know, lots of young people

mostly lot of people living in NYCHA housing, they were talking to us about safety issues. You know, we want more safety, but we don't want necessarily more policing. We don't want more surveillance. We don't want more tools that tell us that we're criminals. We're actually the ones that are asking you to help us improve our living conditions. And so how do you build safety from a perspective that is community driven is completely different if you start from that departure point.

And the solution, know, back then we worked with the Brownsville Community Justice Center and they said, you know what, again, not rocket science, let's talk to youth. Let's actually talk to them and see how and what are the things that they would like to be doing if they have been touched in one way or another by the criminal justice system. And young people said, you know, we want to be musicians, we want to be in the media industry, we want to be doing this kind of like multimedia work. And who are we to say that you're not going to be the next artist? So what we did is we ended up funding workforce development programs where people unlearn multimedia editing skills.

And then that, the homework of these programs was the opportunity for young people from one housing development to meet the older adults from the other housing development. And then at the end of literally doing the homework, maybe the kids didn't care that much about the story of the lady living in the fifth floor, but if you're editing somebody for hours, then you know their name. And then for that person, this kid had a name, had aspirations, had goals, and you create this community.

bridges between people that didn't know each other. And at the end, what made Brownsville safer in the programs that we run was not more cameras, was to take all the content that you've created and actually put it on the streets and allow for businesses to do economic activations, for people to do events, and for Brownsville voices to be projected and Brownsville residents to be enjoying their own spaces. And that is just an example of how transformational this community-driven perspective can be.

Now I got the opportunity to be the chief information officer in the civic engagement commission because of that work. I was basically tasked with the challenge, can you bring this work that you did in Washington Heights and in Brownsville and elevate it at scale and do it across the entire city of New York as part of the people's money? And also, since I was a tech person, can you design the infrastructure on which we can run this citywide participatory budgeting program? And we were given only a number of months, about five months.

And, you know, just to tell you very quickly, my job in the commission has been to design the infrastructure to run the participatory budgeting program known as the People's Money, to do impact assessment for the projects that we fund, and to build coalitions among different types of organizations to actually do more participatory democracy. And I'm proud to tell you

that in the inaugural year where we launched the People's Money, we became the largest participatory budgeting program in the world by engagement. We got more than 208,000 people to vote on our projects, and every year we fund anywhere between 45 to 20 projects to implement, again, initiatives like this across the entire city of New York.

Octavio Blanco (11:44)
That's really cool because it really aligns with what our plans are here at Uptown Voices so that when we are currently developing our social mission, and I really love to hear that because it does seem like we have a lot of things in common when it comes to making sure that the youth and the older community here get to do some intergenerational journalism and unlearn how to use the

tools that are available to them to create not just content, but to create journalism and to see how powerful that can be to create change in the community that you want to see. So thank you for that work.

Led Black (12:21)
Yeah,

and I think new ideas are super important, man. We need new narratives, new ideas. Oscar, what do you think are the biggest challenges that the 13th Congressional District faces, and what are some of your solutions to those problems?

Oscar Romero (12:36)
Great questions. Well, I mean, there's a lot of different challenges, right? And one of the things that I'm very proud to do is this campaign is not based on just my research or my aspirations, but really it's based on everything that I've been hearing over the last seven years from our communities through all the work that I've been doing in participatory budgeting and community engagement. Let me start with some basic things, right? So my campaign is grounded on two concepts. On one,

is to fight against this fascist government that we have right now that is doing everything they can to take rights away from all of us. Whether those are our civil rights, whether it is just a simple notion that you can go out on the streets and feel safe. We no longer have that. Not that we didn't have that in many ways before, but now we have a federal government literally patrolling around the streets with a Supreme Court.

Led Black (13:20)
Thanks.

Oscar Romero (13:28)
has decided that it is okay to racially profile us because of the color of our skin, because of the clothes that we're wearing, the jobs that we're working, or the accent that we speak. And that's dramatic. That is dramatic. That creates a chilling effect that makes our communities fearful, that takes hope away, that traumatizes children. And this is, let's be clear, this is an expansion.

Octavio Blanco (13:39)
Thanks.

Oscar Romero (13:55)
and overt expansion and continuation of what the black communities across the entire country have been facing with different forms of abuse, surveillance, mass incarceration, police brutality, of accountability, and so many more things. So we have a fascist government that we have to face, and we have to change, and we have to stop. That is engaging in neo-colonial wars openly, blatently

that is leveraging tariffs to literally obtain benefits for their cronies and corporate friends at the cost of literally all of us. So it's wild what the federal government is doing, they're doing. You just saw like the different things that the part that they do in flat out racist narratives that just divide us and makes us be more afraid and fearful of each other. That is one thing. But even if we were able to say stop absolutely everything that is Trump doing right now.

That doesn't change the underlying systems that led to people like him to be in offices like that. That doesn't change the systems that lead to more than half of our congressmen and representatives being millionaires, right? So then what is the hope? What are we fighting for other than just not being destroyed? Well, we're fighting for those rights that are yet to have. We're fighting for us to be able to go to the doctor. Most developed countries have universal healthcare systems.

where people can go to the doctor and do not get bankrupt. Where their taxes, instead of funding and subsidizing pharmaceutical companies and massive insurance systems and hospitals that pretend they're 501-63s when their CEOs make more than $20 million and their nurses that do their job do not have the same insurance on the healthcare services that they're providing to people. You have doctors.

Led Black (15:33)
Mm-hmm.

Octavio Blanco (15:39)
Mm, mm.

Oscar Romero (15:41)
that are getting out of like insurance services that we're providing things that they are no longer able to get, right? So we have a healthcare system that is insane that at the end of the day profits from letting people die. So we have to fight for that. We have an education system, a public education system in New York City. We're blessed to have the largest public education system in the nation. But unfortunately, it's an education system that has a legacy of segregation.

If you go to our schools, you see that there are schools where there's more black and brown kids and have less resources and have less teachers or teachers with less opportunities and more challenges because guess what? The challenges that we face in our communities are overlapping. So if the parents are working and the apartment is crowded, then the kid is not gonna have as many places to study and to focus. If they're struggling with food, they may be also hungry. And not to even mention.

that when you live in a multicultural household, your parents just may not have learned the same things that you're learning the same way, and their ability to help you in school is different, right? And so our systems, rather than addressing all these systemic issues in our school systems to set our children for success, what they do is that they have formulas to provide resources that simply do not provide enough.

And part of that is the federal government not playing a role in saying we should guarantee that we have quality education in basic education for everybody so that our kids can actually be set for success. And part of that is again, higher education. Higher education is unaffordable for most people. And what that means is that the prospects for people to do upwards mobility, to fulfill their dreams, to do whatever they want and actually go and get the jobs that make them joyful.

All of that is going to trash can. What you get is student debt, the American way. So the moment you graduate, you're going to have to be thinking about how you're going to pay those students loans. And again, you have a federal government that is now trying to get more pressure into the students rather than trying to cancel them. More than $1 trillion on student loans, millions of people that are unable to live in a city that is already not affordable. So higher education as an opportunity for people to be able to

succeed is a huge problem. And just to give you another number, know, the most ambitious Biden program to provide a higher education that he was advocating for during his campaign for the entire country will have costed less money than when we appropriated for the border and ICE. Think about that. Think about that. Where is our money going? So another thing that is very important in the district is housing. Building affordable

Led Black (18:06)
Hmm.

Oscar Romero (18:15)
housing and creating conditions for people to actually not to be displaced. So, you know, we have 59 NYCHA housing developments and out of those 59 NYCHA developments, many of them are moving into the PACT, which is a way for NYCHA to finance repairs in the buildings. Now, the challenge is that a lot of these different ways to manage it is through private companies.

private managers that we have reports from the former controller's office, Brad Lander's office that are evicting people at the same rates as market rate housing. So again, we have all these challenges with public housing because the federal government is not funding public housing. So it is not only funding NYCHA and improving the conditions for people to live better in NYCHA. It is about also creating new pathways for people to own something. 89 % of the people in the district rent, right?

And if you take a look at how many businesses we have, for example, in the entire city of New York, we black people represent more than 25 % of the population. And we only have 3.5 % of our businesses owned by black people. If you take a look at Latino population, something along those lines, 28 % of the population are identified as Latino. And still we have about 6%.

of the businesses owned by Latino people. In places like the Bronx, where 50 % of the population are Latinos, right? We lost, over the last 10 years, a quarter of the small businesses. Why? Again, because of all of this pressure of the real estate developing. In the Bronx, for example, white folks represent about 10 % of the population, and 67 % of the businesses are owned by white folks, right? And when I say this, you know,

Led Black (19:52)
Wow.

Oscar Romero (19:54)
All I want to say is we live in a segregated district where we don't own housing. Our housing that we rent is unsafe. We are threatened in all these ways to be displaced where we actually are not part of the workforce that provides upward mobility. Another data point that I will give you, black and Latinos represent about 40 % of the working age population in the city. Depending on how you count the technology jobs, you you have about 200,000.

technology jobs in the city. 17 % of the population there identify as black and Latino. If you get more technical, you get to software developers, 9 % identify as black as Latino. You know, there's a reason why I'm the youngest Latino CIO of the across government city government agencies. And I also tell you, I'm not one of the highest paid. So if you go to the positions of power in the technology industry, the higher you go,

Led Black (20:26)
Wow.

Yeah

Oscar Romero (20:48)
the whiter it gets, the more male driven it gets, and the salary disparities are absurd. And so again, we don't own anything. We don't have safety when it comes to our housing. We don't have prospects for us to be able to do upward mobility because everything is inaccessible when it comes to higher education. We're segregated in our schools, so that means that we're actually not put in the best conditions to succeed. We're not part of the highest industries of workforce.

Led Black (20:49)
Yeah.

Oscar Romero (21:13)
We don't have affordable healthcare. So what are we paying our taxes for? I'll tell you what we're paying them for. We're paying them to subsidize corporations. We're paying them to subsidize corporations that have very, you know, exploitative jobs where people have to work more than one job and then they still have to be on SNAP benefits, right? And the last thing I'll say, it's all of these things are connected because if you do not get

If going to school is not accessible and getting doctors and becoming a medical practitioner is not accessible, then you don't get more competent doctors. Then you don't get people that understand the challenges of your community that represent you. Then you don't get more diversity, right? If there's no better conditions and planning for how housing ought to be developed in a way that is human centered, that is social, where people can own things, then the business is going to be place just like everybody else. And then what you're going to have is

the size papers going up and corporations and chains taking the place that used to be the moment of business that you all grew up with. So that's what I see.

Octavio Blanco (22:13)
Yeah.

We're seeing a lot of that happening in the business. In our commercial districts, we see a lot of corporate companies coming in, and we're seeing fewer and fewer mom and pops. One of the things that I see that's happening, I would put it in a historical context, when Charlie Rangel was our congressman and Adriano Espaillat challenged, it was a

It was a sea change, right? We had a Dominican who was running to represent a very Dominican population. Now he's been in Congress for many years. And what I see happening now is a different kind of sea change, where I'm seeing more of a youth movement to...

that's demanding more accountability, it's demanding ⁓ less ties to corporate interests and to AIPAC and things like that. Is this, mean, and you're running, so you're running now. Have you recognized the sea change? Is this part of, know, do you feel that the tide is turning and why is the tide turning?

Oscar Romero (23:23)
mean, because everybody is tired of just the same. You know, we deserve so much more and we pay so much money, you know? And the thing is, what we're asking for is not rocket science. We're not asking for policies that do not exist in other places that we don't have, even in our own history, examples of how they can and they were successful. We're asking for very basic

rights. You know, I am very proud to be part of this generation of young people from across the city and really the country that are running to do something, to change something. But I got to tell you, to me, this is not a matter of choice. It's a matter of survival. You know, the day I decided that I was going to run for Congress was when ICE came to my house. They knocked on my door. The goons with guns.

They're accused of existing, they're accused of crossing the border with laws that were created in 1929 by the same racist people that were getting Nazi awards. So that is the kind of status that we have, right? And I think that many people are realizing across the country that we are not powerless, that we can actually not only say and demand that our government officials do something, but we can actually do it.

Led Black (25:22)
Mm.

Oscar Romero (25:27)
We can actually do it and we don't need nobody's money. We don't need to be dependent on corporations. We can actually speak up for ourselves and say, this is what we want for our communities to be the truth, right? So I honestly think that is part of the tension. I would say something else that is very important, which is the division that we have across communities. That was done by design. Our communities were put against each other because again, I painted a picture.

Who is the winner in the picture of New York 13? The corporations. Those are the winners. It is not our community. We put our communities against each other because if we split us, if we're not organized, if we don't fight together, if we don't hold empathy for each other, then the interest of these corporations will win. And that's our challenge and that's what everybody running the New York 13 needs to be concerned with. You know, the way that I see it is we have

Led Black (25:56)
Mm.

Oscar Romero (26:18)
to away from this history of oppression and this history of making politics, that it's my people versus your people. We're all oppressed here. And we all, no matter where you come from, if you're an immigrant, whether you come from Senegal, you come from Cote d'Ivoire, or you come from the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Ecuador, name it, you were oppressed where you were. You the legacy of colonialism that you have experienced in your context. And then you come here.

Led Black (26:28)
Hmm.

you

Oscar Romero (26:46)
to be welcoming to yet another legacy of segregation and colonialism. And every one of us, we have our classes that are different, right? And we have all of our challenges that we have to unlearn about how we see ourselves. And it's a lot of different things that we have to unlearn. We have to unlearn sexism, we have to unlearn racism, we have to unlearn classes. And each one of these looks different in every one of our contexts. But at the end of the day, it is only by...

holding empathy for each other and understanding, hey, this other community might not see things exactly the way that I see it, but we're in this together because at end of the day, our children are not gonna have opportunities, our seniors are living paycheck to paycheck. And when we win, we don't win for only one community, we win for all. So that's a good example. How do we fight together to build a better New York City for everybody that lives here?

Led Black (27:33)
And Oscar, you want to say, right, this is Black History Month and one of the great heroes of my life is Malcolm X, who was killed on February 21st, 1965, right? And when he would preach, they would say, make it plain, minister. So I like what you're doing. You're not playing games. You're being straightforward and telling the truth about the billionaires and how we need really essential fundamental change. So your candidacy is exciting, my brother. I'm really excited about it.

because I think we need that kind of plain spokenness, especially right now. So we have a few more moments, tell people how they can reach you, how they can get involved with the campaign, what are the social handles, URLs, all that.

Oscar Romero (28:11)
Thank you, thank you. Well, everybody, you you can learn more about my campaign at OscarforCongress.com. That's all the information is there. All the policies are there. You can reach out to me by registered to volunteer. We're going to be doing participatory workshops across the district where we're going to be talking to people about all the challenges that we have in our policies, whatever we're missing. If we don't have it in there, it my way and we'll work on it. This is not a policy that is designed from me to tell you what the challenges are.

This is a platform for all of our communities to come together and become stronger because we have this race to win, but then we have an entire country to change. And for that, we need to, we need to unite. So please, I'll, everybody, everybody, all the information to, to, to register with me is going to be made accessible to anybody who just registers to volunteer. There you go. That's the link.

Oscarforcongress.com. That's the website and the Instagram is Oscarforcongress with the number four.

Led Black (29:03)
Perfect, Oscar, thank you so much, brother. I will definitely see you around, brother. Thank you so much.

Octavio Blanco (29:03)
Got it, got it.

Oscar Romero (29:07)
Thank you for having me.

Octavio Blanco (29:08)
It's great to have you Oscar. Thank you. We wish you the best of luck on your campaign. We wish to stay in touch with you and to make sure that we can continue to collaborate because collaboration is the way for us to win. so I thank you for throwing your hat in the ring and I wish you the best.

Oscar Romero (29:25)
Thank you. That's right. See you all soon.

Led Black (29:27)
God brother, see you soon.

Octavio Blanco (29:27)
Bye bye.

Led Black (29:28)
What's up,

Octavio Blanco (29:29)
That was great. I'm really happy that we got a chance to speak with Oscar. Oscar is one of these young people who has been working in community and will be speaking to more of the candidates and hopefully also will be speaking to the incumbent. you know, this was a great conversation. think ⁓

So this is reason why we're here. One of the reasons why we're here is to make sure that folks know who's out there working and trying to make their their communities better. We had a really cool week. And we had a really interesting, you know, we were we've been connected now with our with our mayor, we we got to talk to the mayor this week, which was ⁓

Led Black (30:11)
You got to talk to the mayor. That's pretty cool,

Octavio Blanco (30:15)
You know, it just it just says to me, you know, that we're on the right track. We are we are doing important work. We live in a community right now that's got a vacuum of news and information, you know, and we live in a society that doesn't, you know, show up for us correctly. So everything that we can do to to to fix that is why we're here. And

you know, we need to make sure so. So how about you? Like, what are your thoughts about our interview? And what are your thoughts about this week and about our future here?

Led Black (30:50)
mean, listen, man, I think the future is bright. I think this is an extension of what I've been doing with Uptown Collective. think we get to really expand on it, do more thorough. And it's been a beautiful ride so far. I'm excited, man. This is a good thing, especially talking every week. It's fucking freezing out here today. It's Super Bowl Sunday.

Octavio Blanco (31:15)
Hahaha

Led Black (31:15)
and it's

fucking freezing. It's like, like Dominicans, have like a bunch of sayings when it's free. So don't repeat this because it's a bad, like, so we'll say La Creta. La Creta is basically a woman's, you know, genitals. But so when it's cold, I don't know why, what that, but we have all the, so we have el people, which is another, another term. So if you see some Dominican person going el people, that's because it's so cold. And so it's La Creta. So if you hear La Creta in the streets today, you're going to hear that. Yeah. So.

Octavio Blanco (31:28)
okay, okay.

Hahaha

my god.

Led Black (31:43)
But yeah, man, it's freezing. It's

Octavio Blanco (31:43)
Yeah, well, it's definitely that.

Led Black (31:46)
definitely brick ass today, you know what I mean? But I'm going to my mom's house a little bit, so it's a big back day. So later on, we're have wings and all that. But before that, my mom is doing a big old Dominican feast. So she's gonna make salchichong. She's gonna make a big mangu, the fried cheese, the eggs. And then my mom gets fancy with it. So she'll do two different versions. She'll have the fried salchichong, and then she does salchichong guisado, which is kind of like.

Octavio Blanco (32:00)
man.

Led Black (32:11)
Not everyone does that, I guess more like a regional thing like in the Cibao but everyone does it now, but back in the days, like people didn't really know that, but my mom basically cuts it up small, puts peppers, onions, and it puts it in a tomato-based sauce. So we're gonna have a feast this morning, you know what mean? So I'm excited about that.

Octavio Blanco (32:26)
I

was thinking about you the other day because I was at after, it was actually the same day that we interviewed the mayor. I was so busy that day. It was that day that I saw you with the iPad and I fell down in front of your building. I can't believe that happened. That was crazy, but I'm okay. But I went to, I went to a malecon right after all that stuff and

Led Black (32:36)
Mm-hmm.

Yo, yeah, that was wild,

Mm-hmm.

Octavio Blanco (32:48)
I

know how I wanted to ask you how you feel about what's one of my favorite soups. It's Mondongo beef tripe soup. What's your ⁓

Led Black (32:53)
Mondongo, you know, I do not like Mondongo because, you know, it's so funny

that you say that, right? Because when I was a kid, my mother was the numbers lady for like a good chunk of uptown. People would come from all over the Heights and uptown to go play numbers with my mom. That was back then, it was like a mom and pops thing. would come to, you know, you tell your dreams, you play your numbers, but my mom would make Mondongo every Sunday.

she would make Mondongo for the people that would come play the numbers with her. So it's like, hated the smell of it. It's like something that's so like, I can't have it for that reason. Every Sunday she made Mondongo. So I do not like Mondongo at all.

Octavio Blanco (33:31)
You what? I had a feeling that you didn't like Mondongo. I don't know why. I didn't know why. But now I know. But I gotta tell you, that's my go-to when I go. Malaconde got the good chicken and everything. But for me, it's the Mondongo. All right.

Led Black (33:35)
I do not.

Yeah, not a fan.

Malaconte

to me, pound for pound, one of the best Dominican restaurants uptown. Pound for pound, they make it happen.

Octavio Blanco (33:52)
It definitely is.

All right, we're gonna bring on our next guest right now, Maria Perez Brown. She's in our lobby. I'm gonna let her in.

Led Black (34:01)
Alright, let's go.

Hello.

Octavio Blanco (34:03)
Maria, hello.

Maria Perez-Brown (34:04)
Hi, can you hear me? Hi. Great.

Led Black (34:05)
Okay, here you go.

Octavio Blanco (34:08)
Welcome to the show.

How are you? Maria Perez Brown, Emmy award winning writer, producer and executive, currently head of kids and family for Time Studios. And she's the co-editor with Mickey Barra, who is the founder and chair of the Latino Leaders Network of the newly released Latino Leadership Speak.

personal stories of struggle and triumph volume two, which Maria, we welcome to the show, How Are You?

Maria Perez-Brown (34:39)
Thank you. Bearing the cold in New York City today. It's really crazy out here, but happy to be with you on this Sunday morning.

Led Black (34:44)
for

Octavio Blanco (34:48)
It's great to be with you. Before we get started, I want to just mention a small world, a small world situation. Me and Keith used to work together at CNN. had no idea. Yes. Yeah. How did that happen? So anyway, it's great to see you. ⁓ We just finished.

Maria Perez-Brown (34:59)
He just mentioned it this morning. He was like, ⁓ you're going to be with my friend on his podcast. was like, excuse me. You didn't tell me that.

Octavio Blanco (35:12)
having an interview with one of our candidates for Congress, Oscar Romero out of East Harlem. And so it really ties in well with the work that you've been doing with the Latino Leaders Network. Because we're in a really interesting time right now where the whole

conversation about Latino leadership and who and where do Latinos stand and who they want to have as their leaders is becoming so, so sort of distorted. And a lot of that has to do with the fact that I think that many Latinos don't see themselves represented. so first of all, let's get started about the book. Tell us about the book and

precisely why is it so important for these kinds of narratives to be produced right now in this moment in time?

Maria Perez-Brown (36:11)
So this has been a labor of love. It's been a couple of years in the making. So the Latino Leaders Network is an organization founded by Mickey Ibarra, who's a lobbyist in Washington, DC. He's had a long history in Washington. He worked for President Clinton and was really a key part of his cabinet at the time.

made a lot of contacts and ⁓ remained in Washington, D.C. as a lobbyist. So I met Nicky many years ago when I was working for head of programming for a cable network. And he was the go to person to be able to make sure that the the whatever whatever company you were representing got their voices heard in Washington, D.C. He was a direct connection to the congressmen, the senators.

And if you needed to get a meeting set up to make sure that your cable company had carriage or that your whatever you needed to do on a local or on a statewide level, he was a great contact and a great conduit to getting those meetings set up. So I met him in that context and I started seeing the important work that he was doing with his nonprofit organization. And one of the things that he was doing was inviting

nonpartisan leaders in education, in Congress, mayors, anybody who had a voice to come in and deliver a keynote speaker at a Latino Leaders Luncheon series. What that series did, he invited whoever wanted to come to that and he would have them talk about problems in their community and solutions, but most importantly, they were personal stories. How did they get there?

How did they achieve the success that they had? What were some of the struggles? And he focused predominantly on their childhood. Like, you you were a migrant worker and your family drove you up and down the West Coast, cutting and collecting fruit. And then when you got to Northern California, a teacher saw something in you and told your parents, this kid should stay in school. So we have stories like that. And then that kid went on to be an astronaut.

So we have many, stories like that. And when I met Mickey, I said, Mickey, why don't we put those stories, you have them collected. What are you gonna do with these archives? So we created two books together. The first volume one had 33 stories and these 33 stories were Latino leaders from different nationalities, Mexican, Venezuelans, Cuban, Puerto Ricans, et cetera, and Dominicans. And then we had so many stories that created a volume two.

Again, they're inspirational stories where people talk about their lives and how they got there, how they got to this position and who was instrumental in supporting them, whether they're parents, a teacher, a neighbor, anyone else. There's always somebody in your life that says, you got something special. We're going to help you get there. And those little bridges, those connections is what is being celebrated in these stories.

Led Black (39:18)
And I want to say too, like I think sometimes leadership is something that we don't think about enough, right? I think the lack of leadership is so glaringly apparent right now as a country. And especially for our community, think leadership is so important. What are some of the like big takeaways that you learned about leadership as you wrote these books?

Maria Perez-Brown (39:39)
Wow, great question because I felt just involved in every story, right? I saw myself in every single story. When somebody said, my abuela used to come to my house and we'd have this great Christmas celebration and she pulled this little boy aside and go, you you got something special. Don't let anybody tell you no. And these little nuggets of wisdom were spread throughout all of the stories. Let's see, I think that.

The education stories really resonated with me a lot. The leadership, how somebody got the opportunity to get their foot in the door was really important, especially in Washington, D.C., because many of these leaders are representing communities, right? They're leaders in Congress, leaders in senators, who if it wasn't for something in their lives, they wouldn't be there now having a voice for a bigger community in Texas or in California or in New York.

or even in smaller towns. those stories were just really amazing. And to me, I felt like every child and every person who wants to learn something and be inspired could find one story in these two books to connect to and to get some sort of inspiration for whatever work they're doing.

Led Black (40:55)
Thank you.

Octavio Blanco (40:55)
Yeah, no, and tell us a little bit about yourself. I understand you were born in Puerto Rico and tell us about your connection to Latino identity because one of the interesting things, as you mentioned, is that we've come from all over the world. We're Venezuelan, we're Mexican, we're Puerto Rican, we're Dominican. So all of these different countries have their own independent cultures. But then we come to the United States where we are all

you know, Latino, and that can sometimes be confusing. Sometimes it can be difficult to create unity. tell us about your own connection to being Latina, and also can you put it into the context of our national Latino identity? Is that something that we can strive towards, or how do we...

and mesh this tapestry so that we both can stay connected to our cultural roots and then also be authentically Latino and American.

Maria Perez-Brown (41:57)
That is a fantastic question. And I think it's at the crux of who we are as Latinos in this country, right? The fact that the word Latino exists or Latinx, so all the ways that they've tried to change that word. And part of the reason it exists is because when you're looking at us as a monolithic group and you're looking at Latinos coming from wherever and needing to classify them once they arrive to the United States, that word evolved because we have some

commonalities, right? Sometimes it's language, sometimes it's culture, sometimes it's history. But it basically, when you look at that group and you break it up, yeah, we come from different places, we have different social backgrounds, we have different economic backgrounds. You may look at some of the immigrants who came in the early days of the Cuban immigration, and they were, yeah, displaced from their country, but at the same time, they came from a wealthy

right? Some of them did. And so they had a very different experience to their native country than some of us who came from Puerto Rico, where I was born in a sugar cane field where my mother was a squatter. My dad left, so she was a single mom. We had, she has five kids. At the time she only had ⁓ four. And when she came here, it was because they were recruiting

workers to come to the sweatshops in the Lower East Side. So they recruited in Puerto Rico, were like, cheap labor, come to America, we'll pay your ticket and you'll come and I don't know where you live, but we will pay you five cents a piece for you to sew shoes and belts. And that's how my mom got here, to be one of those workers to come in and be in a sweatshop. She left us with my grandmother, which again, a very

common story of the Latino and other immigrants who leave their children with the grandparents to come here in search of a better life. My mom, let's see, she lived in Brooklyn in the rough part of Brooklyn at the time in the seventies where it was just kind of dangerous for a single woman to live in an apartment and commute all the way to Manhattan to work.

Led Black (43:42)
Mm.

Maria Perez-Brown (44:06)
she had my aunt bring us to her so she could help take care of us. And she brought her children and we went to public schools in New York city. And about when we were about 12, when I was about 12, things had gotten so bad in the neighborhood that she said, you know what, we're moving to Connecticut where we have other relatives. And she packed us up and took us out of that neighborhood in East New York. And we moved to Hartford, Connecticut. So I grew up in middle school and in high school going to Hartford public high school.

Led Black (44:29)
Thank

Maria Perez-Brown (44:34)
And it was in Hartford when we got there that they had all these reading programs where they made sure that inner city kids could read. And we weren't reading at the right level, but what we did was, I know for me, I became this voracious reader and I increased my own reading ability from second grade to eighth grade, went to public school and then got a scholarship to go to Yale. It's not your...

But for me, it was a series of small moments where teachers, counselors, friends really saw in me something special that I didn't see in myself. The other part of it was family. So that is common with pretty much every story in this book, that there was someone, a family member, a teacher, a friend who saw in these kids leadership opportunity. My grandmother would say, you know, tú hablas mucho, so you're going to be a lawyer one day.

She did, I was always fighting and discussing and I was not a quiet kid, probably because I was a middle kid and I needed to be heard. so when she told me I was going to be a lawyer, I had no reason to doubt her because in my eyes she was magic. So anything she said, I would do, right? So I said, okay, then I got to be a lawyer. I didn't know about college.

Octavio Blanco (45:34)
Hahaha

Maria Perez-Brown (45:48)
I didn't know where to go. My sister went to University of Connecticut. So naturally my mother wanted us to go there together and room. That way she could take a Sunday drive and catch us if we were doing anything out of bounds, you know? So I said to her, no, there's this boy that I like. He's really cute and he's going to a school called Yale. So that's where I'm going. And so that's how I got to Yale. I really didn't understand. was Ivy League or none of that nonsense. So.

Led Black (46:10)
ha ha ha ha.

Maria Perez-Brown (46:15)
But that changed my world really. And then I went to law school after I got out of Yale.

Led Black (46:19)
And to underscore what you were saying about the commonality, right? It's funny because my mother was also worked in the garment industry in a sweatshop, right? So it does show you that, you know, I'm from, my mom's from Dominican Republic, you were from Puerto Rico, but there really is this commonality that Latinos, I think, we really need to lean into, right? I think that a lot of times, and La Union Esta La Fuerza, right? And I think that the Latino giant is still sleeping.

And when the Latino giant sleep wakes up, you know, I think we can make the world, you know, take notice. So, you know, I want you to expand a little bit more about that, though, like how important Latino unity is right, especially now with everything happening. Why is Latino unity and leadership important?

Maria Perez-Brown (47:00)
think Latino unity is so much more important now because whether we are from Puerto Rico and we are American citizens by birth or whether you are from a Latin American country that requires you to apply for citizenship here, the commonality is we're all walking down the streets of Harlem and somebody could grab you, throw you in a car and nobody hears from you for a while because their plight meaning the people who, whether

Led Black (47:23)
Mm-hmm.

Maria Perez-Brown (47:29)
or not citizenship is at the core of this abuse that's going on right now in the streets of Minnesota and elsewhere, we are all Latinos. So we have the same plight.

Led Black (47:35)
Facts, Yep.

Right.

Octavio Blanco (47:42)
Yeah, yeah, we've lost, we've lost as Latinos and as Americans, we've lost the due process that we are given in this country, because we can just get scooped up. They can break down our doors and come into our homes for no reason. Now, we're running up against the end of our day. I know that we've all got other places to be. So before we let you go, we've got four minutes.

Let us know, how can we, where do we go to find this book? Is it at Barnes and Nobles? Is it at our local Word Up bookshop over here in Washington Heights? Where can we find the book and how can we get involved in making sure that there's gonna be a volume three because there's plenty, plenty more people out there that we can definitely give shine the light on.

Maria Perez-Brown (48:29)
Absolutely. So it can be found anywhere you buy your books. And so if you just go online and search it, the publisher is Arte Publico at the University of Houston Press. And so if you just look up Arte Publico, you can buy it right on their site. And so we are, you know, in terms of getting involved, I feel like youth, right? I work in children's television. The majority of my work has been also as a writer.

And so for me, making sure that this book gets in the hands of young kids, high school students, middle school students, because that's who we seek to inspire. And for some of us, we already have our careers entrenched. And so making sure that we communicate to a young Latino who may or may not have known that they can go to college, that they can go to community college and that they can be a congressperson.

that they can go to any school, any higher education and aspire to be an astronaut. All of those stories are here within the pages of these books. And so I think that we unlearn by seeing examples of what we can be. And that's what exists in this books, just plenty and plenty of stories. Some are funny, some are sad, some are, you know, will make you cry, but all of them will be in here and you will find one story to inspire you.

Octavio Blanco (49:49)
Great, thank you so, much for joining us. ⁓ Thank you very much. And we hope to be in touch with you in the future.

Led Black (49:51)
Thank you, Maria.

Maria Perez-Brown (49:57)
thank you so much. Take care. Bye. Thank you. You too.

Led Black (49:58)
Have a good Sunday.

All right, y'all. So, it's Let Black Spread Love is the Uptown Way, Super Bowl Sunday. It's really gonna be about the Bad Bunny thing. So that's what we're gonna make sure we watch it. I hope everyone got their stuff together, cause I didn't and I was supposed to put the ordering from my wing. So now I'm gonna be reaching out to some of my local vendors uptown. You heard? It's cause my wife's still saying, you shouldn't have it yesterday, but I didn't. So here we are, you heard?

But I don't really give a fuck about either team to be honest. know what mean? It's the Patriots and the Seahawks. You know what I mean? I still remember a few years ago when they had Marshawn Lynch and because Pete Carroll didn't really have, he had issues with Marshawn, he didn't let him run it in and he tried to pass it and they lost that game. Has to be the worst decision in football history, but it is what it is, y'all. You know what mean? Hopefully today I got one box in the pool, so hopefully I can make it. I never win in the fucking pools anyway, so.

I'm hoping to get hope to win. You know what mean? Like again, so I'm really a boy watching this performance. You know, I was reading about his Grammy win, how shook he was that he would get assassinated, which is really crazy. So he had like a bulletproof vest. had crazy security, drones, fire. You know, he was really, really scared because he says since he was chosen for the Super Bowl, he's gotten nine death threats.

⁓ for his family on him. So he he's really you know, really shook and it's really a a messed up thing that that that someone you know has to go through that because they've been chosen to perform at the super bowl So, you know, i'll be there supporting. bad bunny and like like we were talking where I guess earlier, you know, it's like

This is what putting me in bones on the Latino thing. Like I'm not Puerto Rican, but today I'm Puerto Rican. You know what mean? During the Puerto Rican Day Parade, I'm Puerto Rican, right? And the same thing, like single de Mayo, I'm Mexican. Like we gotta show love to all our brothers and sisters and their joys and their glories, our joys and their glories and their hurts and our hurts as well. you know, we gotta keep, some bones on that Latinoness. Let's just stop talking about it and don't let the ones that are messing us up, you know.

Octavio Blanco (51:46)
Hahaha

Led Black (52:00)
You know, we need to stay united and stay united front. Are you good brother?

Octavio Blanco (52:04)
Yeah, today's

Today's the day of Latino unity. We're all I think that's that's that's the takeaway, you know, Latino unity

Led Black (52:07)
That's right.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Octavio Blanco (52:11)
important and we got to make sure that that we that we keep it. So thank you, led.