Public defender Conrad Blackburn looked to Harlem for heroes while growing up in Florida. They ranged from Malcolm X and Marcus Garvey to hip hop artists like the Diplomats (Dipset) and Immortal Technique. Now, he hopes to be next in line as his state assembly campaign heats up. Last November, he registered to run as a democrat with a housing and affordability platform for Assembly District 70 in Harlem to face incumbent Jordan Wright in June’s primary. But his path to this point has led from humble beginnings in Florida to his activist platforms today.
Blackburn, 33, was born in Miami Gardens to Jamaican immigrants and raised in Tallahassee public housing by just his mother, an African Methodist Episcopal pastor. “We had to scratch to get by,” he said. “We lived paycheck to paycheck, and that really radicalized me [and] motivated me to figure out what caused that dichotomy.”
Too young to vote for Barack Obama, Blackburn first engaged politically through phone banking for the future president. Majoring in political science and philosophy later exposed him to Karl Marx and socialism in college. Suddenly, the poverty he witnessed and experienced made more sense. Outside of the classroom, he joined Students for a Democratic Society, where he rallied for Palestinian rights in the early 2010s. Law school followed and he foresaw a career in public interest work.
“As soon as I learned exactly what being a public defender was, I was hooked, and I knew that was what I was going to do,” said Blackburn. “I knew a lot of people who grew up like me would have benefited from having a lawyer that actually cared and would put work into their case.”
In 2018, he moved to New York City while studying for the bar exam. Julia Salazar’s State Senate run inspired him to plug into the NYC Democratic Socialists of America (NYC-DSA). But Blackburn initially kept the organization at arm’s length and remained unsure if electoral politics could effectively work towards Black and Brown liberation.
Meanwhile, he found a place in Harlem and joined the Bronx Defenders, rising to a policy counsel role three years ago. So Blackburn went up to Albany to fight for change long before he considered public office. The position fashioned him into a leading criminal justice reform advocate and placed him on the frontlines in the fight to preserve the bail and discovery reform laws. Blackburn also worked on writing Local Law 42, the city’s solitary confinement ban.
“I have a caseload while I’m doing policy work,” said Blackburn. “Every problem that I’m seeing that’s a systemic problem, I’m able to think [if] there is a policy solution…through doing work as an on-the-ground public defender, I’m able to talk about things in a lens that other policy councils aren’t because they don’t have cases on a day-to-day, granular level. I was able to bring my own clients’ stories and experiences into those spaces.”
But his initial decision to eschew big law for public defense meant facing economic anxiety once again. His salary was not sustainable and Blackburn risked getting priced out of Harlem. Before 2020, the Bronx Defenders long stood out among the local public defense organizations as non-unionized.
Blackburn led his shop’s successful efforts to join the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys – UAW Local 2325. Last year, he and his colleagues fought to obtain a $68,500 wage floor, a new standard not only at the Bronx Defenders but for the industry at large. The folks at UAW saw even more potential in him and tapped him to run for office. And NYC-DSA sought other young, charismatic candidates to seize on member Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s historic victory. Blackburn’s name came up thanks to his labor organizing.
As far as his state assembly run, NYC-DSA and the UAW have backed his campaign. So did the New York Working Families Party and New York Communities for Change, as well as elected officials like State Senator Jabari Brisport, Assemblymember Claire Valdez, and councilmember Chi Ossé.
Today, Blackburn believes electoral politics can play a key role in Black liberation and the socialist agenda after meeting many “dope Black organizers” in DSA. And while Eugene V. Debs could never make “Dip-Set Forever,” the former presidential candidate now ranks among his personal heroes.
“The only way labor is going to win power is twofold,” said Blackburn. “You have to have a marriage between the workers’ union and what Eugene Debs called the ‘political union’ — that’s socialism in politics. Judges have the power of injunction, and that’s what ended up stopping a lot of unions’ power building in the past, [while] right-leaning politicians [gutted] union rights.
“So the only way we could protect union rights is by getting socialists elected into office. That really solidified my view that [the] time is now to run for office and that DSA was my political home in addition to UAW.”