NYC NOW - July 31, 2024: Evening Roundup

Episode Date: July 31, 2024

A panel studying whether New York state should pay reparations to descendants of slaves held its first meeting this week. Plus, New York City Mayor Eric Adams' campaign is facing questions over undocumented expenses. Also, WNYC’s Samantha Max looks at how the case of Dexter Taylor blurs the lines of the traditional political debates about the Second Amendment. And finally, WNYC’s Michael Hill talks with Anastasia Curwood, historian at the University of Kentucky, about the similarities and differences between former Democratic Representative Shirley Chisolm and Vice President Kamala Harris. A panel studying whether New York state should pay reparations to descendants of slaves held its first meeting this week. Plus, New York City Mayor Eric Adams' campaign is facing questions over undocumented expenses. Also, WNYC’s Samantha Max looks at how the case of Dexter Taylor blurs the lines of the traditional political debates about the Second Amendment. And finally, WNYC’s Michael Hill talks with Anastasia Curwood, historian at the University of Kentucky, about the similarities and differences between former Democratic Representative Shirley Chisolm and Vice President Kamala Harris.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. I'm Jene Pierre. Your job is to find out, is there a case for reparations in New York State? A panel studying whether New York State should pay reparations to descendants of slaves held its first meeting this week. Queen Senator James Sanders was among them. The nine members of the Community Commission on Reparations, remedies took their oath of office at the state capital. Linda Brown Robinson was there, too. She's the Western New York Region Director for the NAACP. We're not here to take away anybody's

rights. We're here to make sure our rights are heard. Governor Kathy Hokel and state lawmakers approved the law creating the commission last year. The panel now has one year to present its recommendations. It'll be up to the state legislature to decide whether to accept or reject them. New York City Mayor Eric Adams' campaign is facing questions over millions of dollars in undocumented expenses. WMYC's Bridget Bergen reports on the draft report obtained exclusively by our newsroom. The campaign finance board's draft audit of Mayor Adams' 2021 campaign is 900 pages. There are 22 categories documenting disclosure problems, improper donations, and questionable expenses. Examples include TV ad buys, missing key key.

broadcast details, vendors without contracts on file, and car repairs and parking tickets paid for by the campaign. The watchdog agency audits every city campaign and a draft audit is a standard part of the process. Records show Adams' campaign attorney Vito Pitta asked for an extension to respond to the board. He said all the issues raised in the audit will be addressed and that the campaign follows the letter of the law. Friends of Dexter Taylor say he's a tinkerer, an engineer, who made more than a dozen guns in his Bushwick apartment as a hobby. Brooklyn prosecutors see it differently. They say he's a public safety threat who flouted state laws to make ghost guns.

As WNYC's Samantha Max reports, Taylor's case blurs the lines of the traditional political debates about the Second Amendment. Before Dexter Taylor went to prison, he worked for decades as a software engineer. He spent his free time composing electronic music, making TikToks with his neighbor about philosophy. And then I got to thinking that that's really what human civilization actually is. He debated political hot topics on his podcast, including the Second Amendment. We're talking about the government infringing on a right, because maybe it's the right to bear arms. He's more or less just a big nerd.

Sheridan Carter is Taylor's friend and former neighbor. He says he was shocked when police descended on their building early one morning in April 2022. Carter says he knew his neighbor was a Second Amendment supporter and had firearms. But he didn't think Taylor was breaking any laws. Being from Texas is the furthest from strange for me to see. My grandpa had more guns than Dexter. I spoke with Taylor on a crackly phone line from Rikers. He told me he's been fascinated with weapons since he was a kid. He remembers pouring over a picture book about the history of guns. Taylor says his interests picked up a few years ago when he started to see posts on social media

about homemade firearms. So he started ordering parts online. So he started ordering parts online. A lot of them. According to court records, police seized eight rifles and five pistols he built, plus more unfinished parts. They also found a 3D printer,

shell casings, and gunpowder. Taylor says he was, was building firearms as an engineering experiment, that he wanted to figure out how to make safer and more reliable guns, and then sell his technology to police departments and the military. He's a staunch supporter of the Second Amendment, and he says he had a constitutional right to do so. He says he wasn't going to hurt anyone. I never get anything to make my neighbors, to make my fellow New Yorkers here for their safety. But Taylor didn't have a license to possess the guns he made.

In New York, that's illegal. And it's also illegal to make guns without serial numbers, because those markers help law enforcement to analyze guns used in crimes. You have to have the appropriate licenses. You have to pass a background check. David Puccino is with Gifford's Law Center, which advocates for firearm safety policy. He says New York passed restrictions on ghost guns

to make it harder for people to build firearms that will later be used in crimes. It's not to say that nobody can be a hobbyist. It's not to say that nobody can buy gun parts and make their own guns. They can, but they just have to follow the same laws as if they were buying a whole gun. The Brooklyn DA's office says Taylor broke those laws when he amassed a collection of unlicensed guns. A jury convicted him of illegal weapons possession this spring. And a judge sentenced him to a decade in prison. The mandatory minimum was three and a half years.

It's such a waste for Dexter to be there. It's such a waste. Nina Dibner is Taylor's friend and former partner. They have a 16-year-old daughter together, who they co-parent. They do not agree on guns. I think regulation is important because otherwise, people who are not fit to have weapons will have weapons and do bad things with them. Dexter is not one of those people. I would never be worried that he would do something.

irresponsible with a weapon. Taylor's attorney says they're appealing his conviction, and they're prepared to take the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. But that process could take years, and the outcome is uncertain. In the meantime, Taylor is serving his sentence at a maximum security facility upstate. He'll be eligible for parole in 2032. That's WMYC's Samantha Max. Still ahead, we discussed the similarities and differences between Shirley Chisholm's 1972 run for the Democratic presidential nomination and Kamala Harris's run today. That conversation after the break. In 1972, Brooklyn Democratic Representative Shirley Chisholm would become the first woman

and black American to run for a major party presidential nomination. Since President Biden dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed his vice president as the party's nominee, Kamala Harris could soon make history too. My colleague Michael Hill talked with Anastasia Kerwood, historian at the University of Kentucky, an author of the biography, Shirley Chisholm, champion of black feminist power politics. Shirley Chisholm received a lot of pushback during her time in Congress, as you write, in her run for the Democratic Party presidential nomination. And I believe you would say that a lot of it had to do with racism and sexism.

What did that opposition look like and how do you compare it to what Harris has and may soon experience? Unfortunately, she did run into a lot of racism and sexism. Because of her being both black and a woman, sometimes those things work together. Sometimes they work separately. But it was always a part of her experience. What she encountered in terms of sexism came not just from white men, but it also came from black men. who saw her as not quite staying in her place. And not all black men, colleagues by any means,

but there were some who had leadership positions in the Democratic Party who really saw her as stepping out of her place. By the same token, she was not trusted or sort of seen as one of the girls by the predominantly white feminist movement. How do you see this with Harris? With Harris, it's a little challenging because it can be a little bit subtle.

It doesn't take the form of, oh, she's a black woman, so she can't do it. What usually happens is that people say, well, I don't know if other people will like her. Are people going to support her? Are people really going to support her? Like, people who are, who were uncomfortable, who might not have been able to articulate why they were uncomfortable about Obama, about Hillary Clinton, are going to be also having a hard time articulating it. What ended up being Chisholm's defeat in her run for the party? Chisholm ran to win, but she acknowledged the impossibility of winning.

She knew she wasn't going to win the nomination, let alone the White House. She said, if we could have, that would have been great. But she was realistic. What she really wanted, victory for her would have been a coalition that held together through the convention to put serious pressure on the nominee and on the party platform. How has Harris coming into the race changed the dynamics in 2020 Ford? And how do you think her identity shapes any of that? Harris has basically hit the reset button.

And people are sitting up and taking notice. Younger people, especially black women who are not obviously the largest part of the electorate, who have an outsized influence in the electorate in terms of get out the vote and organizing voters and campaigns and elections. And so those people are excited. They're fired up. They are getting ready to go all out on behalf of Vice President Harris. That's Anastasia Kerrwood, author of Shirley Chisholm, champion of black feminist

power politics talking with WNYC's Michael Hill. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WMYC. Catch us every weekday, three times a day. I'm Jenae Pierre. We'll be back tomorrow.