On July 8, at the Cherry Grove Community House, while Daniel Nardicio and the Arts Project of Cherry Grove’s Club Cumming at the Beach was in residence, openly lesbian Democratic New York State Gubernatorial Candidate Cynthia Nixon, a native New Yorker, who met her wife Christine in New York and had her three children educated in New York City public schools, came to speak and to campaign.
As an activist, Nixon is well-known for her part in fighting for LGBT and women’s rights, as well as for Federally-funded schools across New York State. Of her opponent, incumbent Andrew Cuomo, she said, “He’s governed like a Republican. There’s a reason the Koch brothers donated to him,” contributing toward the “$31 million in his campaign coffers, all but one percent from corporate donors.” “I have a distinct advantage over Andrew Cuomo in that I am running in a New York Democratic primary [on September 18] and I am actually a Democrat,”
Nixon maintained. “I believe we are a wealthy state and I believe we have everything we need here, if only we get our priorities straight,” Nixon added, saying that she supports “a Medicare single-pay system for all … and when I say all, I mean undocumented people as well.”
Articulating more of her positions, Nixon said, “We need to expand rent regulation across the state.” “I will legalize marijuana” and get “victims of the racist war on drugs out of jail” and “I will hold fossil fuel billionaires accountable for poisoning our communities,” were other points that she made. She continued, “I will make New York a real Sanctuary State … We need to pass the New York Dream Act so that the Dreamers can have access to public education.” She considers New York a “logical” center of resistance, “and we can see it again when we have real progressive values coming out of Albany.” She is encouraged by the “blue wave” in which “there are so many gay and trans people, so many women running for office.”
After Nixon’s speech, singer Angelo Di Carlo, assisted at the piano by Kyle “Special K” Forester, pronounced a “Witch Hex” against “all you GOP fuckers,” and in song, condemned Eliot Spitzer, Anthony Wiener, and Eric Schneiderman for sexual harassment, adding, “Rudy Giuliani is a dick” and “Mitch McConnell is an asshole,” and saluting “my lesbian Governor: Cynthia Nixon is running for Governor!” Accompanying herself on the guitar, Jill Sobule sang her pro-immigrant song with the sing-along refrain, “When they say they want their America back/Well, what the fuck do they mean?”
Visit www.cynthiafornewyork.com and vote on September 18.