Please check out my conversation with Rick Echevarria, who is running for City Council in New York's 37th Council District in Brooklyn.

This episode is part of a series in which I will be interviewing candidates running in the June 2021 primary for this City Council seat. Rick and I talked about how New York's outdated voting system impacts the city's most vulnerable residents in a very real way. This system resulted in the 37th District being without a Council Member for nearly all of 2020 — a year of acute suffering brought on by the pandemic.

Rick Echevarria grew up in the Bushwick section of this district (the neighborhood I call home), and is running on a platform of housing equity and fighting housing corruption. He ran for this office last year, but was removed from the ballot by the New York City Board of Elections, as were several other candidates hoping to beat the heavily favored party-backed candidate, Darma Diaz. Rick is back in the mix, running to unseat Diaz in the massive 2021 city primary, which opens on June 12 and ends on June 22.

FOR VOTERS: The deadline to register to vote in this primary is May 28, and the last day to notify the Board of Elections of an address change is June 2. Also, make sure you read up on an exciting new development in our election process, ranked-choice voting, in which voters will be able to pick their top five candidates in every citywide primary.

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