Zehra Ansari, Author at ciaooo!

New York was one of the cities hit hardest by COVID-19 and one of the first to scale a comprehensive response to the pandemic. We led a difficult but necessary reduction of local business activity and “normal” life. Almost a year later, tens of thousands of New Yorkers are receiving their Coronavirus vaccine jabs daily.

Amid ongoing federal and state-level vaccination campaigns, NYC has made steady progress in the last four months, with 30 % of the entire city’s population fully vaccinated. But there is still a lot to do to ensure vaccination efforts are far-reaching and equitable.

Current inequities include the misuse or disproportionate use of vaccine allocations by non-Black and non-Hispanic Americans; the digital access divide, where lower-income communities have reduced ability to easily book a vaccine appointment online; and a lack of vaccination hubs planned in communities primarily of color.

Programming and efforts to engage communities directly are a winning formula, reaching precisely those average New Yorkers that the government alone cannot. We spoke with community leaders from across the city about what’s working and where more attention is needed.

Problems of access that existed in the city at the top of the pandemic reappeared as vaccination commenced. “Many immigrant communities are not well-off and struggle with the idea of taking a day off to get vaccinated,” says Sheikh Faiyaz Jaffer, a chaplain at New York University serving its Islamic Center. The Sheikh also highlights a distrust in government that is not unique to Muslim communities in the city.

“Many immigrant communities are not well-off and struggle with the idea of taking a day off to get vaccinated”

Councilwoman Adrienne Adams represents New York City Council District 28 in Southeast Queens, which includes some of the city’s hardest-hit neighborhoods such as Jamaica, Richmond Hill, and South Ozone. The Councilwoman points to a trend of after-the-fact response to community need for resource allocation. “It’s been an issue for many communities of color, I would daresay across the country, to get attention. Across East Queens, it began with a lack of testing sites. Just like with testing last year, we now have ‘vaccination deserts.’”

Councilwoman Adams shares a tapestry of community-led efforts that are driving vaccine education and improving access in her district, “Hosting community forums on the vaccine in Bangla, launching PSAs on YouTube and social media, having a gurudwara [Sikh house of worship] host vaccine drives. We have really wonderful partners and it was critical to maintain these contacts, especially around language access, to help us debunk vaccine myths.”

Across the East River, before the impact of COVID-19 had been widely felt by the city, the Bronx Rising Initiative was one of few organizations articulating a vision for rapid pandemic response. The Initiative raised $3 million from March 13-17, 2020, a fundraising effort that increased ICU bed capacity in the Bronx by 30%. The Initiative’s founder and longtime community organizer, Tomas Ramos, knew that because of poverty, existing health issues, and high density, addressing the unique challenges that the pandemic posed to his Bronx community was non-negotiable.

A year later, the Bronx Rising Initiative zeroed in to increase vaccination capacity for small clinics, partnering with the Morris Heights Health Center to fund several locations across the borough. The Initiative also began organizing pop-up vaccination sites in senior centers, community centers, and public housing in January and has now launched a vaccination campaign for homebound elderly and disabled New Yorkers.

Recently, the New York Times highlighted a concerning trend in vaccine inequity, such as an under-vaccination of Latino Americans across the US in proportion to their percentage of the general population.[3].

In speaking about barriers to getting a critical mass vaccinated, Ramos points to two separate issues. The first is vaccine hesitancy, often accompanied by a mistrust of government. “We started knocking on doors in January. There have been times that we spoke with people who are hesitant. Even if they are not sure, I left my card and our pamphlet. ‘If you change your mind, call us,’” Ramos says.

While taking on “vaccine hesitancy” is now a mainstream strategy, “there’s another issue that people are not talking about,” Ramos stresses, “That’s the economic issue. We don’t have the financial resources to hire more per-diem nurses to do 1.5 million vaccines.”

Part of this vaccine access dilemma is that the city and the state have only partnered with hospitals and clinics. “They haven’t partnered with people on the ground, grassroots organizations like us who know and have been serving communities forever.” Ramos points to the success of the partnership with the Morris Heights Health Center clinics as a way forward, a model that can be replicated by other grassroots organizations in the city and beyond.

“That’s the economic issue. We don’t have the financial resources to hire more per-diem nurses to do 1.5 million vaccines.”

“The biggest takeaway is that this needs to be a ground-up effort. For a lot of the clients we serve, ‘the news’ wasn’t reaching them,” says Anya Herasme, who directs ten senior centers and one residence for older adults in the Bronx. “The first day [of vaccination] at one of the senior centers, people came who were not interested, and they were able to speak to a doctor and ask questions. A doctor who speaks in their language or ‘gets them’ — a real person — makes a real difference.”

Opacity around eligibility requirements made it difficult to vaccinate efficiently from the start. While the vaccination rollout was “all well-meaning,” Herasme explains, “when you leave it up to the states… that was a mess. Asking governors who are not scientists to decide who is eligible first — that is not the appropriate role.”

The lack of a feedback loop between communities and decision-makers also meant that critical COVID hotspots were not given immediate attention. “We’ve had an extremely hard time in worst-hit neighborhoods, like Corona [Queens].”

In addressing communication barriers and increasing community confidence about vaccination, common sense abounds.

Herasme offers a simple solution: “There’s no effort I’m aware of to train older adults to be a peer leader or advocate. When people see their peers doing it [getting a vaccine], they feel a little more confident. Older adults want to advocate, but don’t know who to go to.”

“Everybody gets mail,” says Councilwoman Adams, “There should be more effort by way of mailers, in multiple languages, spelling out locations and the urgency of why vaccination matters.”

For the student communities Sheikh Faiyaz works with, online models of engagement have been very successful. While Sheikh concedes that this isn’t a replacement for face-to-face community interactions, they have opened the Islamic Center’s “doors” to more people and are effective in providing education around vaccines. “The Islamic Center’s email listserv goes out to over 13,000 community members and our reach on social media amounts to thousands more, where some of our video content has reached over a million hits.”

For a city of over eight million, vaccinating as many New Yorkers as possible (and quickly) is the clearest path to restoring the city’s economic vitality.

For a city of over eight million, vaccinating as many New Yorkers as possible (and quickly) is the clearest path to restoring the city’s economic vitality. Vaccination is how we dodge the same public health convulsions that locked us down last March. It’s the best way we can look out for ourselves, our loved ones, and our communities.

From Ramos’ long-term community projects to address food insecurity to East Queens’ grassroots organizers in Adams’ district tackling significant language barriers during the 2020 Census, communities trust the faces and names that are most familiar to them. Across New York, these experiences demonstrate how communities can secure essential resources and marshal momentum “without bureaucracy or red tape,” as Ramos puts it.

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Following the Bohemian and Beat traditions of the West Village, my dad started Caffe Vivaldi as a coffeehouse in the early eighties. It became a bar and restaurant by the millennium and a live music establishment in its final iteration.

That was the Vivaldi I took over four years ago when my dad had a stroke that left him with cognitive deficits and resulted in an early retirement.

Overnight, I became responsible for a staff and a roster of hundreds of musicians from across the world.

Since COVID-19 shook up daily American life, I’ve been thinking a lot about the impact on local businesses. It’s made me question: how could a small business like Caffe Vivaldi remain viable beyond 2020? In many ways, running Caffe Vivaldi was a dress rehearsal for COVID’s reset of both global and local business priorities. I wanted to share reflections and thought-exercises with you from my experience as a small-business owner, and on how COVID truly offers hyperlocal businesses an advantage over big-box retailers.

Before pandemic readiness and emergency planning were even on my radar, running Caffe Vivaldi was a study in change management. As a newcomer and outsider to business, I was willing to take risks that had not been taken before. Slowly, running a business also became a vehicle in understanding how community produces culture. But every day that I unlocked and locked the doors of Caffe Vivaldi with my mostly-immigrant staff, I questioned the viability of what we were doing, and the culture we were creating. There were clear existential threats to Vivaldi as its cultural and artistic project became my own.

Running a business also became a vehicle in understanding how community produces culture.

Four years ago, Caffe Vivaldi did not change as fast as the landscape around it. Local real estate practices had become increasingly predatory and unfavorable to the landscape of independent, community-oriented businesses that made the West Village so singular and beloved in New York. Restaurants in the new West Village are increasingly run by hospitality management groups, with investors and robust marketing outfits that saw prices balloon in tandem with costs, leading to an ever-vaporizing profit margin. Today, small business owners are experiencing a suspension of these long, aggressive trends in commercial real estate and business ownership.

The shakedown from COVID has been a reckoning moment for how untenable a maximalist restaurant culture has become in a metropolis like New York. And that’s good news for independent businesses with the savvy and willingness to model bolder solutions. COVID has bent many restrictions on hospitality and drinking establishments that have been in place since Prohibition ended 87 years ago. Pre-COVID, regulation of how bars served alcohol and whether patrons could sit outside were ruthless.

*A typical Friday evening at Caffe Vivaldi, 2018: Marissa Stanton behind the bar (center) and Reiss Ellis Beckles (far right) performing with his band. Photo by Jackson Notier*

The COVID era has also become an accelerant for the hyper localization of community-to-business relationships and supply chains. These disruptions have much to offer small businesses on how and where they can pivot their operations. But where does a small business start? How can it best serve and best function for its communities?

Expand your definition of community, especially if you’re a hyperlocal business like a bar or barbershop. Build a stronger neighborhood network. Tap into existing networks, like those that are part of community organizations already. Share your story on social media about what you’re going through and how you are pivoting to keep your business afloat and continue to serve people.

What needs can I fill in the community right now?

Ask: what needs can I fill in the community right now? Everyone’s priorities have changed post-COVID. Flexible business models that pivot successfully and understand new opportunities will survive beyond the pandemic. A massage parlor can start teaching 1:1 classes with small groups (or individuals). They can teach individuals how to give themselves spinal/shoulder massages, or how to check their posture at home, more important now than ever as many of us are spending time on our feet or behind a desk. Performing artists can produce personalized concerts for fans, their communities, or for special events, with a tipping feature via cash app/ registration.

The idea is to set up your business for success beyond COVID-19 and treat your community as stakeholders in the success of your business.

As a community-oriented alternative to big tech and big-box stores, mom and pop stationery stores, everything-stores, and hardware stores can work together to develop an online platform that will help sell their products to their local communities and beyond. Neighborhood businesses like tailors, shoe repairmen, carpenters, etc. can teach virtual lessons on how you can replicate their services at home.

The idea is to set up your business for success beyond COVID-19 and treat your community as stakeholders in the success of your business.

In some cases, the only viable choice has been to close your doors for good. But your experiences are valuable — and can be translated in many, many new contexts. Think of yourselves as a new crop of entrepreneurs. What will you build? How can your experience inform a new direction? How can you transfer what you’ve built over into a new product or service? If I’ve learned anything, it’s that community is what keeps you going, even if you do choose to close one door.

By its very nature, COVID-19 has introduced instability, loss, and questions of viability for the small business community. Yet COVID-19 has also activated incredible opportunity that truly wasn’t imaginable before. With a focus on digital growth and a deeper, richer localization of interest, we’ve entered a renaissance. Entrepreneurs who can do both will win.

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With days to go before the official inauguration of President Joe Biden and Vice President, Kamala Harris, we asked former intern/staffer Zehra Ansari what it was like working in his office during the Obama Administration. She discusses what to expect in a Covid world, how New York will be affected, and just exactly what White House staffers eat.

Each American president brings their own style, personality, interests, and “brain trust” to their job. Here is a small window into what it was like to work for Joe and how he and his team might run our country next month.

Interning for President-Elect (and former Vice President) Joe Biden is not where I expected to end up after graduating from college.

Working for then-VP Biden’s policy team was an unforgettable first job. I learned about the fine balance between personality and policy, and how the two shape a leader’s agenda, legacy, and influence beyond the office.

Interning for Biden during the Obama administration

What drew you to the position?
- After spending four years up to my elbows studying decision-making and the world of policy, the opportunity to see public policy in action was one I could not pass up! My cousin told me about the White House internship when I graduated high school and it sounded like something cool but honestly out of reach. Almost four years later, I knew what I was passionate about and I guess it came across!
How does internship placement at the White House work?
- As a candidate for a White House internship, you get to select which offices within the Executive Office of the President that you’d prefer to interview for. I actually had no idea what to expect because I hadn’t even had the wisdom to select the Office of the Vice President as one of my top picks. Nonetheless, it was a surreal moment I probably will never forget when I got that first email from a White House staffer. I became part of a small cohort of interns that staffed then-Vice President Joe Biden’s offices. We were a lucky bunch because I think we really got to see every function of the administration’s many offices within the smaller, more intimate setting of the Vice President’s Office.
What is it like to go to work at the White House?
- It never really gets old. There was always this background hum of excitement. Working in government looks pretty similar from one level to the next, but still, there’s nothing “normal” about the presidency. Something amusing I’ll never forget about working in the Vice President’s office is that in most internal conversations, we referred to the VP as “he” or “him.” Never a proper name used, but you always knew exactly who was being talked about. It definitely highlighted the strangeness and singularity of being around and working for the two highest public offices.

What was your day-to-day like?
- My day-to-day varied quite a bit. I reported directly to a force of a woman on Biden’s policy team, whose schedule could vary significantly week to week, including Carrie Bettinger-Lopez. Her title was White House Advisor on Violence Against Women. In her role, she had to interface with many federal government and external partners — from the Justice Department, the State Department, the President’s Domestic Policy Council, the White House Council on Women and Girls, the White House Office of Public Engagement to national nonprofits, tribal affairs, and Native American officials. I had the opportunity to sit in on different meetings on her behalf.
In terms of policymaking, how do White House staff interface with their counterparts in other federal government agencies like the Justice Department, with national non-profit organizations, with the private sector?
- In a normal administration, there is a healthy cross-pollination between the federal agencies (State, Justice, Treasury, Defense, etc.) and their counterparts who advise and help shape individual parts of the President’s policy portfolio. The Obama administration assembled several interagency working groups that collaborated on critical policy issues. The benefit of working in the White House is that you are buffered from some of the bureaucracy common to the federal agencies. The stakes are different and higher, but there is also a ton of room for innovating on recurrent policy problems to new approaches to new challenges.

Understanding What a Joe Biden Presidency Will Look Like

What will a present-day Biden administration look like?
- Different! I think we will see a combination of Biden’s deep relationships and a new, invigorated approach to running a country in a digital-first manner that is unprecedented. There will be a ton of “face-time” from the President, the Vice President, and especially the Biden-Harris COVID-19 Task Force to the American public and secondarily, the international community. There will be daily press briefings and a very active, very visible press secretary. This will all help build a new sense of transparency and clarity on the American response to the escalating pandemic.

How will the Biden presidency look different from the Trump and the Obama presidencies?
- Biden has been in government and has had relationships in Washington, DC, and around the world far longer than both Pres. Trump and Pres. Obama. Decades of experience can’t be faked. In the heat of multiple crises, it is a huge asset to have an incoming president with an unmatched well of experience in governing and making policy.

How might the Biden administration function with Covid-related restrictions?
- The new administration will need more artful, more nimble decision-making than either of its predecessors. Internally, I think the incoming administration will have to focus on building an apparatus for remote work to happen securely. The President’s workforce will serve as a model for government at all levels, as well as for the public and nonprofit sectors. And we will certainly see a Biden-Harris administration “walking the walk”! There’ll be tons of mask-wearing and social distancing on-camera.
What new approaches might the Biden administration take to interfacing with the American public day-to-day?
- Digital strategy was an important but still-new and still-developing function during the Obama-Biden administration. It will become a far more massive part of the Biden-Harris administration and take center-stage in the incoming President’s approach to sharing information.

What does a Biden administration mean for New York City?
- I think a Biden administration will be in visible lockstep with NYC’s progressive agenda in a way that the White House has not been in the past 4 years. As I’ve heard from city government staffers, Biden’s win will greatly impact the tone of NYC’s mayoral contest coming up next year.

Just for Fun…

What do White House interns eat for lunch?
- Chopt salads, but I might be biased! There are a bunch of places on Pennsylvania Ave near the White House complex to grab a quick lunch or have a work meeting off-campus. The White House also has two cafeterias — one off the West Wing that’s a bit more formal, and then one at the lower level of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on campus. A lot of folks brought their own lunches too!
Did you get to meet President Obama?
- Yes! Once! Right before he and the First Lady were scheduled to light the National Christmas Tree, he spent about 25 minutes with our intern class answering all manner of our questions and posing for an epic photo op in the East Room.
Describe a fun fact/historical anecdote that you learned.
- The President has one office — but the Vice President gets three. There is the VP’s office in the West Wing, which is where s— goes down; the VP’s Ceremonial Office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building; and the VP’s office in the Capitol Building as the ceremonial President of the Senate. The VP’s Ceremonial Office desk has a famous drawer that half a dozen Vice Presidents have marked with their signatures. The VP’s Senate office desk is called the Wilson Desk. It’s a beautiful ornate wood double-desk and has… a different kind of mark. When I first saw it, I could not look away from the two tiny holes drilled into it. They were impossible to ignore. It took me about five full minutes to realize that President Nixon was the culprit! When Nixon was in office, this was the desk he worked from. The holes were drilled to feed in the infamous wires that started the Watergate scandal!

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New York politics follows a long arc of progressivism. This commitment to forward-thinking, to change, and social reform, is stamped across our political identity from the Roosevelts to the Cuomos.

Naturally, this progressivism has kept our country’s extreme partisanship and political division from our doors. Yet that same partisanship is how my generation and the next have understood media and politics for the last three decades.

In each presidential contest, we part red states from blue and outline a battlefield to conquer the smaller, less partisan “purple” constituencies. And as much as New York is a sign of progressive American ideals, every four years we feel like the placeholder, a safely blue state, perhaps too blue to matter. Our political identities seem often prewritten and prescriptive. New York is a perennially blue state — but we are also more.

Terms to Know:

Progressivism: a political philosophy that promotes ongoing social reform
Partisanship: a strong prejudice toward a certain cause or movement, leading often to a rejection of compromise with political opponents
Purple: A term describing a state or smaller constituency where the two main parties in the United States (Republican and Democratic) have equal degrees of support from voters

In search of perspective, I spoke with two people I associate strongly with where New York has been and where we are going: Hector Carosso, writer, filmmaker, longtime West Village resident, and Henry Robins, former Legislative Aide to Speaker of the New York City Council Corey Johnson.

I spoke with Henry about “blue fatigue” in New York. He had some surprising insights on how significant moderate-leaning constituencies in New York get overlooked by the extreme partisan media narratives. “I do think the pendulum is swinging in many places from extreme positions to the middle,” says Henry. “People don’t talk about it but there is a strong Republican tradition in Staten Island, Queens, Brooklyn, Long Island and upstate — and a strong moderate tradition among Black voters in New York City”.

Moderate political views do get a bad rap. I, too, absorbed the media narrative that moderation was either weak or establishmentarian. But moderation defines how New York has rebalanced against a swing to the partisan extremes.

New York’s Rockefeller Republican generation made their name by reaching across the aisle on issues of substance. It’s clear that New York moderates get overlooked — and perhaps taken for granted in spite of the fact that they are a core constituency of both Republicans and Democrats in New York. Extreme partisanship enables the uneven, unequal valuing of these voters.

“I believe too many politicians spend too much time chasing and swaying “toss-up” constituencies and not enough time among their core bases — driving up voter turnout and actually getting to know and address the needs of their constituents,” argues Henry. “If there was more of that, especially in regards to the Black community, I think we’d see much higher levels of engagement and more of our problems solved in ways that would satisfy everyone.”

Latino-Americans are another often-misunderstood but essential constituency that leans towards the middle. “Latino-Americans in New York and across the country are traditionally more conservative than people might expect — but that conservatism doesn’t necessarily mean that Latinos always vote Republican,” says Hector.

This could not be more apparent in the current election, with action-based principles guiding political sentiment rather than a conservative value system. “The fact is that [President] Trump has crossed the line over and over in disparaging and targeting Latinos, and even the conservative Latinos are fed up,” Hector points out. “Those who came from authoritarian countries and have become US citizens know what a wannabe dictator looks like, and they are not going to stand for it here.”

In a state with such strong and consistent progressive political outcomes, our blueness can cause fatigue — with a resignation that perhaps our votes matter less than those of less-populous, more purple states. This could not be further from reality.

It cannot be said enough that what happens in this state has arguably the most significant influence within the United States. From President Trump to Bernie Sanders and his acolytes like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York-style politics are at the helm of both ends of the partisan spectrum. In this election cycle alone, seven New Yorkers ran mainstream campaigns for the presidency. New Yorkers are the ones shaping our present political moment.

“We’re seeing a shift in New York politics at the moment and much of it is generational”

At home, Henry says, “We’re seeing a shift in New York politics at the moment and much of it is generational. We have younger politicians like Corey, AOC, and countless candidates for [New York City] Council in the 2021 cycle who have injected their personalities into their public personas. You could call it a form of populism but, in my mind, it’s reflective of a whole new demographic of voters and constituents. Millennials and Gen Zers want to see more humanity from their elected officials. People want candor, not BS.”

In this era of public life, the political is deeply personal. The politics of exclusion and exclusivity cede to a newer, broader bloc of voters, as Henry defines them, who think and care deeply about the intent and biases of their elected leaders. This hunger for authenticity in our politics is somewhat at odds with the extreme partisan swings in our public life. Is it healthy to have such wild swings in our politics? What does it indicate about our democracy?

“Many of our founding fathers lamented a two-party system on the grounds of partisanship and promoting a business-style of government that is not necessarily democratic. One might project into the future that the parties could splinter,” Hector says. “Meaningful change is going to take time, but what I am most optimistic about is how young voices — new political vanguards like AOC — can effect change. You now have former DAs and prosecutors leading criminal justice reform and youth activists who are focused on environmental justice and climate policy.”

New York’s blueness does not always reflect our true political diversity and character. Perhaps it doesn’t need to. Perhaps our blueness is our diversity, and how we give our fellow citizens across the country a window to how we progress as an American body politic.

“In previous elections, my vote as a New Yorker has gone to the Green Party but this year I’m definitely going to vote for Biden,” Hector concludes. “The news media is bought, punditry spews from all directions and information is getting more and more skewed. So it really is up to the citizenry to take our politicians to task.”

“If it weren’t for New York City, New York would be a purple state like Pennsylvania. This election could be decided by lawyers, so it really is unlike any other,” Henry stresses. “Our vote really does matter; a strong turnout in New York and in California sends a huge signal to the rest of the country.”

Our late Supreme Court Justice and native New Yorker Ruth Bader Ginsburg had apt reflection on the partisan swings in American public life: “The true symbol of the United States is not the bald eagle; it is the pendulum. When the pendulum swings too far in one direction, it will go back.”

This Election Day is as important for us as New Yorkers as it is for our fellow Americans west and north and south of the Hudson. Next year the mayor of New York and 70% of City Council seats are on the ballot and will define the road ahead for our Empire State. Let’s get to the polls, New York. Ever upward!

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Early voting in New York started on Saturday, October 24 and runs till Sunday, November 1. Find your polling place here. You can also mail in your ballot — it’s recommended to do so as soon as you can so your vote gets counted. Your last chance to vote is Tuesday, November 3 — make sure your voice counts.

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