NYC Council District 39 Race: Justin Krebs Seeks Seat

PARK SLOPE, BROOKLYN — Voters in New York City's 39th Council District, which extends from the Columbia Waterfront District down to Borough Park, will see seven names on their ballots when they vote in the June 22 primary election.

One of those names will be Justin Krebs, a community organizer, nonprofit leader, entrepreneur and author.

Patch reached out to all candidates in the election to create these profiles. Krebs' responses are below:

Age (as of Election Day)

43

Position Sought

City Council, District 39

Party Affiliation

Democrat

Neighborhood of residence (i.e., East Village, Astoria, etc.)

Park Slope

Family

Married to Casey, a midwife and birth educator. Three kids: Sadie (3rd grade), Juno and Ruby (1st grade), all at PS 39. The kids have grandparents and aunts all active in their lives and joyfully their cousin is in the neighborhood

Does anyone in your family work in politics or government?

Family works in theater and culture, sister has worked on many political campaigns as well

Education

Harvard College - American History and Literature

Occupation

Director of Campaigns at MoveOn; 6 years

Previous or Current Elected or Appointed Office

n/a

Campaign website

justin2021.org

Why are you seeking elective office?

I believe that government, at its best, is the tool by which we tackle common challenges and invest in shared solutions that we can’t accomplish on our own. After 20 years of advocacy and organizing to elect good folks and persuade and pressure our elected leaders, I’m ready to become the inside ally that works with community partners to solve problems together.

The single most pressing issue facing our (board, district, etc.) is _______, and this is what I intend to do about it.

Education. A lot of folks talk about schools because they’re running for office, I’m running for office because I want to talk about schools. We need to make education a focus -- truly prioritizing high-quality education accessible to all our students in all our schools -- and marshaling the city’s resources and mobilizing our communities and every sector of city life to a vision that centers on true participation and equity in our schools. This district has taken great steps with the District 15 integration plan, and needs to support and build up on that to address the vast differences in how our families experience their local schools. This means working for smaller class sizes, enrichment programs and afterschool programs in all schools, investing in individual learning, ensuring every school has a nurse and social worker, protecting our students’ data privacy, and bringing joy into our children’s school days.

What are the critical differences between you and the other candidates seeking this post?

There are so many good candidates that are running for this office, and no matter the outcome, we’ll have a good representative for this district. With that said there are two things that make me different from some of the other folks running for this seat. First is my orientation towards schools -- it’s going to be my first priority every day of the week to make sure that we’re increasing budgets for all public schools and truly reimagining what equitable schooling looks like as we recover from this brutal pandemic—and as we do better than return to “normal” which just didn’t work for many of our students. Second, I’ve spent my career bringing people together to create bold, progressive change—and to get things done together that we can’t do on our own. I’ve used all the platforms I’ve been part of -- from my role as National Campaigns Director at MoveOn, to the creation of Living Liberally / Drinking Liberally social communities, to the stage of The Tank to the social networks of digital organizers I’ve organized and housed -- to bring diverse communities together to get big progressive change done. That has meant leading organizations, managing teams and budgets, building coalitions, and always driving toward delivering results—all of which is experience I’m looking to bring to our city council.

How do you think local officials performed in responding to the coronavirus? What if anything would you have done differently?

Brad Lander did extremely well on multiple fronts:
- Organized large, accessible zoom meetings early around issues/industries (gig economy, small business, education)
- Turned to key advocacy fights -- rights/protections for gig worker protections, essential worker bill of rights, pushing attention on the childcare crisis, open streets for play, recreation and business
- Provided excellent sources of information -- health, how to support community -- via email and website
One area where I’d have worked differently would have been with more of an early focus on education and organizing teachers, parents, administrators together more actively as early as the summer of 2020 to face the challenges of confusing and chaotic decisions and lack of clear vision from the city level.

Describe the other issues that define your campaign platform.

Schools is obviously a priority, but I’m also committed to:
-Invest in what makes this a vibrant, livable city: Our small businesses, neighborhood main streets, arts, culture, nightlife, bike- and pedestrian-centered design, parks and open spaces.
-Ensure New York is a leader in all ways in confronting the climate crisis
-Shift financial power, and also shift political power from those with wealth -- to support small businesses and workers instead of monopolies and big corporations, to empower renters and those in need of affordable housing instead of developers, to invest in public spaces and the public sphere
-Transform how we police, so we’re spending less dollars on over policing and more on undoing decades of regressive policies

What accomplishments in your past would you cite as evidence you can handle this job?

As a leader in the School District 15 (which substantially overlaps Council District 39) Presidents Council, I've experienced the challenges of allocating resources for different schools and the structural difficulties helping all schools thrive. And over the last few months, we’ve used our City Council campaign to be part of the advocacy movements that successfully pressured the DOE to end the school budget clawbacks (https://bklyner.com/budget-amnesty-for-public-schools-and-more-education-news/), and demanded an end to the arbitrary two-case rule that was leading to thousands of lost in-person school days across the city (https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=446237419967101); our campaign led over a thousand parents, students, and educators to call for a plan for the fall school year from the mayor (https://patch.com/new-york/parkslope/1-000-bk-parents-teachers-call-fall-school-reopening-plan) and hosted workshops both on how to advocate for safe, successful school reopening and how to support parents in helping their kids this year; and we stepped up to survey hundreds of remote families to see what they need to make next school year a success when the DOE dropped the ball (https://www.amny.com/news/report-35-of-new-york-city-families-worried-about-sending-children-back-into-classrooms-this-fall/).
In my work as National Campaigns Director at MoveOn, we used our platform to defeat Trump’s policies in Washington—specifically stopping his attack on the Affordable Care Act and helping fuel the 2018 Blue Wave. If elected, I’ll use the office of city council to continually demand real accountability and communication from the Department of Education and generate tangible progressive change on all fronts.
Finally, The Tank—the theater I helped start 18 years ago and have been the Board chair of since—has been a unique institution, supporting thousands of artists each year, including during the pandemic, and offering a different, creative model of how to present new work across performing arts disciplines. My experience supporting our leadership team, navigating real estate, grants, city agencies, budgets, and helping work with artists, audience, volunteers, and other stakeholders will all help shape the perspectives I bring to City Council.

The best advice ever shared with me was:

That it was OK—even encouraged—to question authority