Independent House candidate Andre Easton refuses to call the Bronx’s NY-15 “the poorest congressional district” in America. To him, it’s the most exploited.
“It’s important that we don’t speak about the people in the Bronx as though they themselves are victims of their own moral individual failings,” said Easton, 39. “The district isn’t poor in the sense that the people are poor. It is made poor by the policy choices that continue to maintain the wages at the level that they are, that continue to maintain the healthcare system in the way that it operates. … We have to be very clear about how we got to where we are.”
Easton is very clear about how working as an educator led him to getting onto this upcoming election’s ballot for the NY-15 congressional seat under the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) banner. He hails from the Bronx as a lifelong resident and the son of Jamaican immigrants. Early on, he studied psychology at Delaware State University after graduating from Mount Saint Michael Academy. After finishing his degree at the HBCU, Easton returned to the Bronx and started working in after-school programs.
Superstorm Sandy coincided with his start as a public school teacher in 2012. There, he witnessed his students facing issues stemming from the “economic and material conditions that they were existing in.” Even in high school, they were not spared the realities of housing instability and unequal access to food and healthcare. Easton leveraged the classroom towards their development and a quality education. But there was only so much a lone teacher could do.
“I felt that that work was and is important,” said Easton. “But consistently, year after year, my students would graduate, and I would see them re-enter the same conditions and be caught up in so much of the failings of society under capitalism, whether it’s crime or black market economy, and I would watch their lives and their potential just be squandered.”
These experiences spurred Easton’s PSL membership. His own studies featuring the likes of Claudia Jones and Ella Baker connected capitalism and its profit motives to poverty, homelessness, and negative health outcomes in Black and Brown communities, further affirming his socialist beliefs. He became convinced socialism, not a reformed or more “ethical” capitalism, was the solution. So when PSL asked him to run for office, Easton agreed after consulting his wife.
He now embarks on a long-shot grassroots campaign. But Easton’s desire for a better future in the Bronx will even the odds. Recently, he secured an endorsement from former councilwoman and fellow socialist Kristin Richardson Jordan.
“Andre, in particular, would be a bold Black liberation voice, and his position as a third-party candidate and also as a Black leftist would shake up the establishment in the best way,’ said Richardson Jordan. “I also think there would be a real emphasis on people-centered and people-powered politics, which is something I truly believe in. Andre is running a completely grassroots campaign, people-centered, door-to-door outreach and on the ground. And totally people-powered economically as well [by] not accepting AIPAC money, not taking super PAC money, not taking real estate money.”
Incumbent Rep. Ritchie Torres meanwhile defended the seat this past summer in the democratic primary, notably against former mayoral candidate and assemblymember Michael Blake. But Easton disputed narratives of a resounding victory, pointing to dismal voter turnout in a district with more than 750,000 residents. Easton believes a socialist alternative can galvanize the public in a way the democratic primary pool could not.
Few elected officials draw as much anger nationally from the American left as Torres, one of the Democratic Party’s most vocal proponents of Israel. Easton wants to end all taxpayer-funded aid to Israel. His policy platform also calls for repealing a federal public housing cap and bankrolling rental assistance while raising the federal minimum wage to $30 an hour.
“The Bronx has always been a site of shared solidarity with oppressed people around the world,” said Easton. “I mean, hip hop is something that was born in the Bronx, and if you go to Palestine, you hear hip hop. You see murals of George Floyd on the walls in Gaza. We have a strong historical tie and international struggle in the Bronx.”
While democratic socialists continue winning New York City elections as democrats, Easton still believes in challenging the two-party system. “The working class needs at least one of their own parties that is only subordinate to the interests of the working class,” he said. “And we believe that there needs to be a party that is advocating uncompromisingly for the solutions that we know are not only necessary but possible.”
