March 2021 - ciaooo!

The upcoming 2021 mayoral election is all the buzz right now, for both significant and unusual reasons. This is the first-ever mayoral election in New York City to use ‘ranked-choice voting’ – a progressive approach that aims to enhance fairness within the voting process.

Additionally, the number of candidates is at a staggering and unheard-of 40+ and counting! But don’t worry – we’ve narrowed it down to a few of our favorite candidates (as of March 25^th, 2021) to give you a head start on what you can expect as the primary election approaches.

How Does Ranked-Choice Voting Work?

When picking favorites, it’s hard to come up with just one. Movies, best friends, bands – political candidates!? Chances are, more than one of them stands for something you believe in, and with a roster this extensive you might be happy to see any number of them win the race.

Simply put, ranked-choice voting lets you vote for multiple parties, listing them from your favorite to least favorite.

If a candidate gets more than half of the ‘first choice’ votes, they win. If no one does, the next step is to eliminate the ‘lowest choice’ candidate. If the ‘lowest choice’ candidate was your favorite, your vote automatically goes to whomever was your second-favorite – and so on. Essentially, your vote ends up counting in multiple ways. Yay, democracy!

Meet the NYC Mayoral Candidates

While most of the candidates have their own step-by-step strategies for improving education, the environment, housing, healthcare, COVID-19, and police reform, we’ve plucked a few ideas from their campaign websites that particularly stand out. To learn more, click the hyperlink on their names to be directed to their individual campaign websites.

Eric Adams

Adams’ vision:

Making it easier to start a small business, particularly minority-owned
Investing in green infrastructure
Desegregating schools and instituting a year-round school year
Distributing COVID-19 vaccines ASAP to people who are most at-risk
Affordable housing options for New Yorkers

Andrew Yang

Yang’s vision:

Extra support for the Basic Income Program
Revamping the NYPD to restore trust in police
All-electric NYC vehicle fleet & expanding the CoolRoofs program to lower the city’s temperature
Offering legal protection and language access to immigrants
Enhance public transportation

Kathryn Garcia

Garcia’s vision:

Continue and expand her extensive efforts fighting climate change, pollution and waste recycling
Free childcare for ages 0-3 for <$70k per year families
Supportive housing for the homeless
Increasing training and instituting a zero-tolerance for police officer infractions
Building new high schools in every borough

Shaun Donovan

Donovan’s vision:

Removing police and images of ‘prison culture’ from schools
Open Streets policy enhancement & permanency
Scaling programs for NYC’s elderly population: Fresh Food for Seniors, ElderSmile, Center for Workforce Inclusion
Establishing an NYC Job Corps
Creating 500,000 jobs for New Yorkers

Ray McGuire

McGuire’s vision:

Suspending credit scoring for small businesses who have been impacted by COVID-19
Hosting the biggest festival ever – the NYC Comeback Festival (Who’s coming with me?!)
Expanding CompStat to accurately measure community safety
Focusing on the Tutor NYC program
Supporting the legalization of marijuana

Maya Wiley

Wiley’s vision:

Launching a New York City Green Future Force: maintaining parks, improve food system, etc.
Expanding CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) and DBT (Dialectal Behavioral Therapy) in schools to prevent instances of gun violence
Acknowledging and supporting street vendors as NYC small businesses
Developing Community Care Centers in all five boroughs
Creating a citywide rent & tax relief program for landlords to prevent evictions

Dianne Morales

Morales’ vision:

Grant support for entrepreneurs affected by COVID-19
Defunding NYPD by at least $3B
Restricting NYPD involvement with ICE to protect immigrants
Utilizing hotels & abandoned spaces to house the homeless
Launching NYC5000 to provide education, vaccines and testing to vulnerable populations

Scott Stringer

Stringer’s vision:

Put two teachers in every classroom from grades K-through-5
Banning all new fossil fuel infrastructure
Renovating primary care facilities in disadvantaged neighborhoods
Expediting license and permit applications for small businesses
Establishing a Critical Incident Review Board to hold the police force accountable

Art Chang

Art’s Vision

Extend the Eviction and foreclosure moratorium until 2022 and invest in affordable housing.
Form and listen to advisory committees in each industry, and create a volunteer “Innovation Corps” of entrepreneurs.
Redirect police funds, changing our existing emergency response methods to utilize unarmed responders.
Bring NYC’s technological infrastructure into the 21st Century

Paperboy Love Prince

Entertainment Meets Activism

Another unconventional aspect of this year’s election is the offbeat candidates whose spotlight in entertainment and social media has given them a unique foot in the door in the mayoral race. Maybe the answer to our political woes is a non-politician?

Boasting an impressive IG following of 39.9K followers, the non-binary rapper is a colorful, unorthodox advocate of universal basic income and universal healthcare. Although they do not have a campaign website, they are still very much an active contender on the ballot.

Ävatar Daví

The 34-year-old musician, author, choreographer, and self-proclaimed “avatar of Earth” envisions giving NYC statehood & renaming the NYPD the NYC P.O.L.I.C.E – Patient Organized Loyal Integrous Community Enrichers.

At the very least, it’s worth checking out his website to learn more about his experience establishing communication with insects and reptiles (no, seriously!).

Barbara Kavovit

Formerly a cast member of The Real Housewives of New York, Kavovit hopes to rebuild NYC with policies such as requiring bail for violent and multiple offenders and raising the minimum wage. She admits she hadn’t meshed with the RHONY cast when she was a part of the show – maybe because this housewife-turned-politician was meant for something more?!

Stacey Prussman

A multifaceted activist and NYC native, Prussman is turning her focus from her career as a comedian, actress and radio personality to rectifying the declination of her beloved city. Her unique platform includes advocating for animal rights, reviving the vaping industry, and decriminalizing sex work.

Isaac Wright Jr.

Wright was used as inspiration for the ABC drama For Life – a tale about an incarcerated man who was wrongfully convicted and became a lawyer during his time in prison. He was eventually released and is now in the running for the mayor of NYC – how cool is that?! Using the slogan “The Wright Choice”, he vows to tackle the homeownership crisis and equal access to basic transportation.

Why vote? Why not!

Face it – these candidates make meaningful points in their bid to improve NYC, even the less prominent hopefuls vying for the opportunity to help reform it.

We need someone to step in, step up and nurture us back to our pre-COVID brilliance and beyond. Ranked-choice voting has provided us with a modern, more inclusive way to get our voices heard this June and November.

It’s important to you – and your vote matters! On March 30^th, join ciaooo! for a private Zoom with Art Chang No topic is off the table, so bring any questions you have. This is your chance to talk one-on-one with a candidate about the most pressing issues facing NYC today, and his plans for moving the city forward.

You can register to vote in minutes and take that first step in playing your part in our collective role of doing the right thing for the greatest city in the world!

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When thinking about the closure of Broadway in New York City, you might consider Alexander Hamilton, Elsa, Evan Hansen, or Elphaba, but what about all those working behind the scenes to ensure the magic of live theatre?

On Thursday, March 12, 2020, Governor Andrew Cuomo directed theatres to suspend all performances, which has now been extended through May 2021.

From janitors to box office workers, choreographers to carpenters, ushers to marketing directors, Broadway employs more than just those onstage.

“I was flying back from San Francisco, and when I got home I lost my entire year of booked events within three days. It was gone,” said Kate Dial, former Broadway stage manager. “We have a mortgage, we have a 2-year-old, and we lost everything at once.”

Dial and her husband both started their careers on Broadway – her as a stage manager and him as a production audio technician. Dial had just begun switching from stage managing live theatre to corporate events in order to spend more time with her now 2-year-old child.

According to The Broadway League, Broadway grossed over $1.8 billion in 2019, bringing thirty-eight new productions to stage. During the 2018-2019 season, the Broadway industry supported 96,000 jobs.

“The theatres being closed is not just a theatre problem. It’s an NYC restaurant, bar, and cafe problem because not only are all of the workers going to different restaurants on break or going to different bars after a show, you also have the audiences coming in who filled those hotels around Times Square and filled those restaurants in between, after, and before shows,” said Ashley Cudney, a former head usher of an Off-Broadway theatre.

Will Broadway Come Back to New York City?

With live theatre shut down for the foreseeable future, its employees have had to find other creative sources of income like starting small businesses, offering online classes, or working at local restaurants.

For Ashley Kristeen Vega, it meant trying to adapt to producing, directing, and acting from her bedroom in Washington Heights. During the pandemic, Vega co-founded Party Claw Productions, a new media production company, with her colleague Laura Kay (click here to donate to their future projects).

Vega claims doing a 50-minute piece solo in her apartment surprisingly left her feeling more drained than she would’ve been in what she calls “the before times.” The energy given by a live theatre audience is a difficult thing to replicate.

“You’re giving absolutely everything and receiving nothing in return,” said Vega. “It’s just me on a screen. Throughout the run, I realized I need to save a little energy for myself because I would finish the show, close my computer, and just sit on the floor for half an hour.”

While Vega exhausts herself constantly working on creative projects from home, other theatre employees struggle to find work at all in an industry where getting hired is never assured. And even if it is, the pay is scarce and sometimes nonexistent.

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This past year the Flea Theater, a prominent Off-Off-Broadway company, faced backlash for failing to pay artists along with numerous accusations of racism, sexism, and overall abuse. After making a statement vowing to begin paying their artists, the theater canceled their emerging artists program, leaving those they said they would pay – actors, playwrights, directors – unemployed.

“I think for the rest of the country, they think ‘Oh the shows are closed down. That’s not that big of a deal.’ But they don’t understand that it’s a huge industry that employs so many people,” said Cudney. “I think the highest stake is people’s livelihoods. For those shows that closed permanently already – those are just jobs lost..”

New York Broadway has a few silver linings

Actor and singer Carla Angeline Mongado chose to find the silver lining between all the Covid devastation and support another important cause.

After singing on a cast album for the (what was supposed to be upcoming) show Platinum Girls, Mongado began sewing masks to generate income during the pandemic. The masks slowly turned into her small business Hiraya by Carla. “Hiraya” translates to “a vision” in Tagalog.

“I think for the rest of the country, they think ‘Oh the shows are closed down. That’s not that big of a deal.’ But they don’t understand that it’s a huge industry that employs so many people,
Ashley Cudney, former head usher of an Off-Broadway theatre.

Eventually, when the Black Lives Matter movement started to kick up during quarantine, Mongado began making protest masks for people to feel secure leaving their homes to join the cause.

“I really put my heart into it,” said Mongado. “I’m not just gonna make a mask, this has gotta be something. That’s where I think being an artist kicks in. We did the Black Lives Matter mask in solidarity for all the different cultures that really believe this was one of the most important moments for the movement.”

Dianna Blaylock worked as an usher for an Off-Broadway theatre when the Covid pandemic hit. Blaylock also worked at merchandise sales and is a part of the Screen Actors Guild for the acting work she’s done.

Blaylock describes the live theatre communal energy that she misses most.

“I love getting to share my love of theatre with other people. Be it someone coming to their very first show – like the high school kids who get so rowdy and hyped. That’s it’s own special moment. Or maybe it’s that one older patron who comes in who’s seen every show that we have and saw whatever monumental show – maybe Chorus Line back in the 70s – and they have to tell you all about it. All of those experiences – I love every second of it. It’s that communal aspect that I love.”

What will the future of New York’s Broadway look like?

As far as the future of live theatre in New York, many of its former employees worry about the number of jobs and the accessibility of shows for those with lower incomes.

Many Broadway and Off-Broadway theatres in the city feature different ways to score tickets for cheap, including lotteries and high school educational programs. With the industry losing money every day the house lights stay down, employees worry about the future of Broadway’s accessibility to the general public.

According to The Broadway League, the average household income for a Broadway theatergoer in the 2018-2019 season was $261,000, more than twice the $71,855 median household income for New Yorkers.

“I feel like it will become a money thing about who can afford to go,” said Dial. “And it is sad because there were so many different endeavors and cool reach-out opportunities that were being incorporated more. I also fear there’s going to be fewer shows, so less work for people. I think the shows that come back first are going to be the ones with the most money – so the Disney shows will come back because they’ve bought out the buildings next door and created Covid entryways. They can afford to have every other seat empty, whereas some shows can’t.”

Although many former Broadway employees fear the uncertainty Covid-19 continues to bring the community, some holdout hope to soon be able to bring the magic of live theatre to audiences once again.

The average household income for a Broadway theatergoer in the 2018-2019 season was $261,000, more than twice the $71,855 median household income for New Yorkers.

“There’s just an unspoken energy between you and the audience,” said Vega when asked what she misses most about live theatre. “They’re excited to be there. You’re excited to be there. And that’s just a very difficult thing to replicate.”

“We really lost a lot of the essence of theatre,” said Mongado. “The question of can we go back or will it ever be the same again – honestly I don’t know, but I’m hopeful.”

Whether you’re an avid theatergoer or someone who just watched The Prom for the first time on Netflix, now is the time to support both local and Broadway theatre! Click here to find ways to support artists and industry employees. Click here to find ways to support artists and industry employees.

Hopefully, by this time next year, we’ll all be able to sit in on our favorite show (while glaring at those who decide to open their M&M’s right in the middle of a monologue).

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