Forest Hills Residents Form Black Political, Civic Advocacy Group

FOREST HILLS, QUEENS — After the murder of George Floyd, Titi Yasukawa, a Black, civically engaged New Yorker who’s lived in Forest Hills for 14 years, began to feel isolated from her community.

Yasukawa, who when I called her at 9 a.m. on a Tuesday morning had already completed a teacher’s appreciation food drop-off at her child’s school, has been actively involved with several civic groups for the past few years, but still felt “that I was always in spaces that Black people were coming into, not that were created for us.”

Although her community took action to stand up against racism and police brutality last summer, Yasukawa told Patch that she needed “a space by Black people, for Black people, that centered our discussions first” — which is how Color of Justice (COJ), a political group centering issues that affect Black community members in the district, was born.

The organization, which will meet every second Thursday of the month starting May 13, welcomes people of all backgrounds and aims to educate members on local political processes, but will specifically serve as a platform to uplift the experiences of Black people in the area.

Yasukawa, who is now COJ’s president, says that the organization’s inaugural meeting is more than a year in the making.

In 2019, she and Gideon Zvulon, COJ’s vice president, first met at a Queens Central Democratic Club (QCDC) meeting where they “caught eyes, and were like, ‘oh there’s another Black person here,’” said Yasukawa.

After that, Yasukawa, Zvulon and a group of other Black people from the area started to go out to a restaurant monthly and “just talk about different concerns that we wanted to raise.”

Initially, the group thought that they might raise their concerns through QCDC, but when the Democratic club stopped having meetings amid the pandemic, and after the racial violence of last summer, they decided to create their own group.

“When I first began to talk about this group to other people some people were like, ‘well why do you need a separate space for Black people? We’re all human.’ And like, yeah, that’s how it should be, but that’s not how it is in reality,” said Yasukawa, who felt that people's lack of understanding as to why she needed a Black-centered space affirmed its importance to her.

“The fact that I’m having to explain this to you, when I’m saying that I need this space, is the reason why we need it,” she said.

For Yasukawa, having COJ as a space where she doesn’t need to explain herself is important.

“There are some issues that are really important to me as a Black person, but when I bring them up in other places people don’t realize or don’t necessarily believe that they’re happening,” she said, pointing to Black maternal justice as an example.

Although it’s well document that Black moms die from pregnancy-related causes at over three times the rate of white ones, Yasukawa didn’t necessarily feel that there was space for her to bring up Black maternal mortality in neighborhood conversations about healthcare — of which there are many, since hospital closures in Forest Hills have long-been a contentious issue.

“You have to teach people because these are not things that come up for them in their everyday life,” she said, noting that Black people comprise less than 3 percent of Forest Hill’s majority white population.

So, instead of having to explain Black-specific social issues to COJ members, the organization plans to focus their efforts on teaching people about how to get politically involved, especially on a local level.

Yasukawa and Zvulon, alongside the group’s five other founders — communications director Natalie Dauphin, community engagement director Travelle Barksdale, and executive board founding members Melanie Rudolfo, Rosa Hall, and Tania Padgett — plan to center their first few meetings on engaging members and teaching them about the political process.

“When I started getting involved locally I had no idea there was a community board, and didn’t know what a city councilperson was, and I don’t think I’m the only one,” said Yasukawa, adding that COJ wants to make sure that members “know how they can participate within their neighborhoods.”

In the future, they hope to motivate candidates of all backgrounds to support issues that are important to Black community members.

But for now, Yasukawa is mostly focused on gaining membership, and making sure that community members, especially Black people, know how to use their voices in local politics.

“I think the major thing is making sure that people are aware of how they can get what they need from their community,” she said, adding “you have to work on the local levels to really get things done.”