NYC NOW - October 28, 2024: Evening Roundup

Episode Date: October 28, 2024

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul is condemning remarks made at President Donald Trump's rally Sunday at Madison Square Garden. Plus, a judge is pausing a project to bring new bike lanes to Long Island City. Also, a teenage girl is dead and another is in critical condition after a subway surfing incident Sunday night in Queens. And finally, a WNYC Radio Rookies reporter looks into voting trends in the Asian American Pacific Islander community, starting with her own family.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. I'm Junae Pierre. New York officials are condemning remarks made at President Donald Trump's big rally Sunday at Madison Square Garden. One of them is Democratic Governor Kathy Hogle. She took issue with comedian Tony Hinchcliffe calling Puerto Rico an island of garbage at the event. I reject with every fiber of my being the sentiment, the word. the hatred that was spute at that event, and I'm shocked and sad that it happened in the great state of New York.

New York State is home to nearly a million people of Puerto Rican descent, and according to the Census Bureau, more than half of them live in New York City. Hopal is a staunch supporter of Vice President Kamala Harris. She recently traveled to Michigan to campaign for the Democratic candidate. A Queen's judge is pausing a project to bring new bike lanes to Long Island City. The decision comes after a local business filed a complaint against the City Department of Transportation. Lenoble lumber argues a two-way bike lane proposal along Review Avenue would have catastrophic

consequences to dozens of businesses. And the lumber company says the industrial area is filled with trucks and forklifts pulling in and out of the road for work. The proposed bike lanes are part of a bigger city initiative to add 30 miles of new biking infrastructure every year. City officials say they'll defend the work in a court hearing next month. Voting trends in the Asian-American Pacific Islander community are on the rise. After the break, a WNYC radio rookies reporter looks into those trends, starting with her own family.

Stay close. You're listening to NYC now. Voter registration and turnout among Asian Americans is on the rise, but research shows it still trails behind white and black communities in the U.S. 17-year-old Jacqueline Um from Bayside Queens isn't old enough to vote yet, but she wanted to know more about voting trends in the Asian American Pacific Islander community, starting with her own family. Um, filed this report as part of WNYC's Radio Rookies program. Growing up, my dad would give me a lot of advice,

mostly about school and not giving up when things get hard, but not so much about voting in elections. In fact, I don't remember ever seeing my dad go to the polls. I learned about the importance of voting in high school, but now that I'm turning voting age in February and already pre-registered, I wanted to know. Why is it that voting wasn't emphasized in my family? So I sat down with my dad for a heart to heart.

How do you think the way you've grown up has shaped the way you view things like voting and civic engagement? Well, honestly speaking, I am not that involved, and the way I grew up maybe did shape my action or non-action towards political things. My dad is 54 years old. He came to America with his parents from South Korea when he was four. They settled on Staten Island.

I grew up in the 70s and 80s. So basically when we came in 1974, different era, different time, pre-computers. We all had landline phones. Talk a bit more about how voting was in your family when you were growing up. Was it emphasized at all? No, not really because my... My parents were Korean immigrants too busy trying to survive and feed their children. And you put in, like, most immigrants, there's language barrier.

Customs are different. Culture is different. Everything's different. Talking to my dad made me want to learn more about the barriers to voting in the AAPI community today. And what I found is many of those same issues still exist. And I think for Asian American communities in particular, a challenge for them is, you know, the issues are around access to the polls, around language, around information in language that is accessible to them. That's Andrew Santa Ana.

He's Deputy Director of Research and Policy at the Asian American Federation. I talked with a whole bunch of people working to increase voter participation in the AAPI community. Christine Chen is executive director and founder of the Non-Partisan Engagement Group, Asian and Pacific Islander American Vote. She says because there are so many languages and cultures in the AAPI community, you need to meet with people where they are. It's like we chat for the Chinese community, WhatsApp for the Indian community, Kakao for the Korean community, right? Language isn't the only barrier that can keep Asian Americans from the polls. Andrew says given a rise in anti-Asian hate in recent years, safety is another concern. Anti-Asian violence is politically charged and polarized in a lot of ways.

I think a lot of voters want to feel safe at the polls. Not every Asian-American voter lives in an ethnic enclave or an Asian or a racial, you know, a place where there's a high population of folks of that particular race or ethnicity. That's not the case in Jackson Heights, Queens. It's enormously diverse and home to a lot of people in the AAPI community.

I recently attended a voter registration drive in Jackson Heights geared towards Asian Americans. It was a festive event with music and a raffle with some cool prizes like AirPods and a Polaroid film camera. So we're going to do two rounds of these things. So yeah, if you don't win this time, you can win next time. Just register to vote and do other activities and you'll have more chances to win. This is where I meet 16-year-old Fari Bokker. Her family is from Bangladesh.

She volunteers with a group that works to increase political participation in the AAPI community. Why do you think it's so important for the AAPI community to be voting? Because we are a minority community, we're not very represented in the media and then also in legislation, and since our community is growing, it's important to have that sort of representation. Research shows the AAPI community is the fastest growing voting block in the United States. But despite their growing influence, voter registration and turnout among Asian Americans still lags that of black and white communities. Christine Chen with APIA vote says it's a marathon, not a sprint.

For a voter to feel comfortable to be able to cast their ballot, they need to be reached out by 12 or 14 times, whether that's from nonpartisan community organizations to candidates or political parties. And it actually has to be done in a multi-layered way. So for us, it's like we have a mailer going to 1.9 million households That's being translated with 33 different versions and 18 different languages. Christine says the power of the Asian American vote can't be discounted.

She points to close congressional races, like the special election earlier this year, in New York's third congressional district that covers parts of Queens and Long Island's Nassau County. 18% of the district's electorate are Asian American, according to APIA vote. And Christine says that helped to catapult Democrat Tom Swazi to victory. because he actually invested resources in terms of hiring staff, in terms of listening to Congresswoman Grace Meng and other API elected officials about where he need to show up, what type of issues that he need to really be discussing with the community,

and to really show that he was really there for the community. And as a result, he was able to win that election. Getting back to my dad, he struggled to exactly remember the last election he voted in. Yeah, I don't hide it. I don't mask it. But it's sad to say, it's been maybe, I don't know, three, three, four elections ago. The last time I voted was probably Clinton times, Clinton and Bush, maybe. I know it can take a lot of effort to convince the people close to us that their voice matters at the polls. But it's worth the effort, especially when your community has been underrepresented.

When I first asked my dad if he planned to vote this November, he said no. But a day later, I got this text message. It read, I just requested an early voting ballot to be delivered to our home. So perhaps next year we'll be voting in the New York City mayoral election as a family. That's WNYC's radio rookies reporter, Jacqueline M. 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.