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There’s no finer a venue for poetry than the People’s House.
“Poetry does not exclude commitments to political and social life. Our politicians are killing us. Too many have been ruined, murdered and maimed. I am sick at the thought of having to plead for accountability and another Go-Fund-Me account. I’m going to Albany to fight.”
Residents of Ridgewood, Glendale, Liberty Park, Woodhaven, Ozone Park, and Richmond Hill deserve model ethical representation that understands the fact that our communities exist on the front lines of state-sanctioned violence, as evinced by ICE’s deployment of military vehicles to our streets with a live-gunner manning the top and local NIMBY demagogues who rally around fear and fiery threats of harm. I avow Pro-Black, pro-immigrant, pro-queer/anti-racist, anti-capitalist, anti-settler colonial beliefs; only the dead understand fully the brutality of American imperialism, so we listen, surviving in their wake. We queer and trans people of color must represent ourselves to combat the heinous lobbying, corruption and inhumane policy-making taking place in Albany.
Our government subsidizes capitalist housing such that developers get to produce value with a pen-stroke. They conscript us to build high-rise machines for their money laundering while the homeless starve below. They increase supply at the top of the market with materials thieved from those at the bottom. Private equity firms and bad policymakers displace us from our homes then criminalize us for our inability to keep up with the rising rents. They construct convoluted metrics and thieve resources; they criminally under-fund public housing while criminalizing its inhabitants. They create barriers to work—fares on dilapidated transit. They police us place to place. They gentrify, feed bigotry, displace families, and build prisons robbing us of our children and ourselves—financing abomination, such as the Vernon C. Bain prison barge, a slave ship in operation today. They demolish our homes. They weaponize the sky to demolish our homes and kill our elders. They starve us. They poison us. They cage us. They shoot us. They push us. They smash us. Our bodies and minds may be brutalized in the gears but when we remember this Lenape land is first and foremost stolen, we ourselves are remembered.
Donate to the Campaign
I am an Adjunct lecturer and poet running for State Assembly on principle. I raise $3000 from 70 contributors all working people, that’s the equivalent of one check from a developer, or an insurance company or some fossil energy monster. I, on principle, refuse that money taken at the cost of our people and our displacement. How are regular people, taken by such spirit to mouthpiece on behalf of their communities, supposed to fight such staggering odds? We fight regardless. This campaign needs your support to survive.
On the Issues
“The campaign is about lifting up the missions our champions have fought over for so long: our tenant unionizers, our fellow prison abolitionists, our teachers, social workers, healers, our makers committed to recuperating a livable present.”
We must enact a Statewide Homes Guarantee for housing is a human right. With 89,000 homeless New Yorkers, and over 250,000 vacant units in New York City alone, New York State must enact emergency measures to immediately provide dignified, supportive housing for its homeless inhabitants. I will fight for a litany of taxes on the rich to house the poor and support the “Good Cause Eviction Bill”, a Right to Sell and Tenant’s Right to Buy, buyback programs to enable tenants and/or the state first passes at purchasing property for sale toward permanent and social housing that’s tenant-owned, organized, unionized, or community land trusts. I will fight to see a fully-funded and retrofitted NYCHA, investing in our most segregated schools, our libraries, housing for LGBTQ elders, tuition-free public education and investing in CUNY’s state budget to meet the demands of the 7KorStrike movement after over a decade of fighting against adjunctification and poverty wages. We must also repeal the Taylor Law which prevents public employees from legally striking.
I support our sex workers, and believe in complete decriminalization they should have the freedom to cooperatively-own and unionize their business, which is otherwise, none of my business. I believe in state-mandated paid leave for gender-affirmative healthcare for our Trans and gender minorities neighbors and selves. I believe in Unsafe Temperatures and Common Sense Heat Protections Laws for our postal workers and couriers and a statewide jobs guarantee. I call for a radical reduction in NYPD enrollment, the abolition of ICE, protections for immigrants, and for legalization of recreational marijuana and the expunging of marijuana-related criminal records. I support the Boycott and Divestment Movement. I pledge as a candidate to the mission of the No New Jails, and am appalled by the sinking of 11 billion dollars into of all things new prisons without even committing to closure of Rikers.
A Poet for Assembly Person
” I’m a life-long New Yorker, Boricua, a poet and Adjunct Lecturer at Borough of Manhattan Community College running for NY State Assembly of District 38 because I feel the gravity of lethal presumptions enacted through law and policy; I feel it in the burning of my cells. I am running to demonstrate thoughtful and ethical conviction to cause.”
I have been involved in cultural programming and literary arts programming in New York City for over a decade. I have learned to work the word to build communities under the banner of the literary arts and engagement. I volunteered for several years at Apogee Journal, a literary non-profit committed to uplifting writers of the margins of visibility and support in the literary sphere to national acclaim. I’ve developed and participated in cultural programs in the city in the past decade at the Queens Public Library, Newtown Literary Review, The New York Writers Coalition, The Poetry Project and elsewhere. My early activism focused on naming dominant biases in literary editorial practices. I sit on the Advisory Board at No, Dear Magazine, a literary non-profit and small press and am deeply involved in QTPOC-literary community have published a book with The Atlas Review and have a forthcoming collection with the Operating System.
I am tired of having to rely on charity for my food and roof, my poetry. I am tired of commiserating with my fellow adjuncts about our unlivable wages. I am modeling something for all of my students. I refuse to tell my students that affecting a shift toward the horizon is up to them; not while regular ass people with histories canoodling the moneyed continued to politrick about willy-nilly while we lose our homes and bury our people.
Joey in Action
Meet Joey De Jesus
A short video introduction of Joey, going over the platform and campaign for AD 38.
“I Can Hold the Fire”
Video of Joey denouncing Queens Community Board 5 for their overtly racist organizing practices. Local politician rally against forthcoming homeless shelters, calling the homeless rapists, pedophiles and criminals.
Campaign Finance
Joey joins over a dozen fellow candidates for local office to demand politicians in Albany provide robust state matching program and protect fusion voting.
Writerly States
Get to know Joey in this five-part interview with Writerly States.
Get Involved
Reach out to Joey!
Joey De Jesus for NY AD38 