[Overseas Chinese Daily reporter Gao Shiyun, February 22, New York News] Senator Andrew Gounardes, a 22nd constituency representing Brooklyn Bay Ridge, Heights, Pennson Market and other places, held a press conference on the Chinese media on the 22nd to brief Chinese voters on the recent achievements of their government affairs and reiterated their position on education, homelessness, bail reform and other issues. Guo Nader expressed his satisfaction at the "Asian constituency" that was born after the rezoning of the constituency, and hoped to continue to serve the Chinese community with another colleague in the future.
Support the revision of bail reform
Guo Nader voted in favor of the controversial bail reform law two years ago, so he has been attacked so far. He noted at the meeting that a major problem with current bail reform is that judges who have the power to set bail claims or impose more restrictions on suspects at their discretion do not always use their discretion as the legislators designed.
For example, Assamad Nash, the suspect who broke into an apartment in Chinatown and killed Christina Yuna Lee, was arrested several times, but the judge who had the authority to set bail or order a mental assessment of him did not. At the same time, prosecutors had the opportunity to take a supervised release of Nash, which was never actually implemented.
Guo Nader believes that one of the major challenges at present is to ensure that law enforcement, judicial and legislative parties try their best to comply with the law, and changes should be made to the imperfect parts of the law. To that end, he had a proposal for a bail reform for hate crimes, supporting an amendment to the bail law to require bail for hate crime defendants, especially for biased criminals.
A homeless house is not a crime
In response to the recent concern of the Chinese community in Brooklyn about the issue of homeless shelters, Kwon said that the three shelters currently proposed are not in his constituency, so he has not participated in many protest demonstrations held by chinese. If the city were to arrange for homeless people to be stationed in his constituency in the future, he wanted to understand the city's plans first, then listen to feedback from the community, and see if it could address the people's concerns.
However, Guonault stressed that there are some misconceptions about the homeless, some of which are homeless shelters, and thousands of homeless children and families need to have a place to place them. Not every homeless person has mental health problems or criminals, so it's important to figure out the types of people placed in the shelter and their challenges. He believes that services for the homeless should be ensured, while also ensuring that everyone in the community feels safe and comfortable.
Expect Asian-American constituencies
After redistricting, Kwonard's 22nd state senatorial district was greatly changed, losing a large area of Pennson Market, Gravesend and Marine Park, adding the west side of Sunset Park, Park Slope and Gowanus in north-central Brooklyn, and the constituency map changed by nearly 50%. The number of Chinese communities contained in the new constituency has decreased significantly, with the proportion of Chinese voters falling from 30.1% to 21.1%, diving by 9 percentage points.
As for the criticism of some conservatives who accuse the new constituency of gerrymandering of being the product of unreasonable demarcation, Gounault said that it is really difficult to understand, because his original constituency is the most typical unreasonable division in the true sense, and the boundaries are extremely irregular. The new 22nd constituency is in a coherent L-shape, perfectly wrapped around the outside of the newly born 27th Asian-American constituency.
Mr. Kwon described the new 22-district, which still has about 22 percent of the Asian-American population, and he was pleased to see that the Brooklyn Asian community had its own constituency and looked forward to working with state senators in the district to continue to better serve the local Chinese.
