By Phineas Rueckert

“I’ve been stopped and frisked; I’ve been arrested; I’ve been held in jail.”

For Janos Marton, running for Manhattan district attorney is deeply personal. Last week, the activist and former civil rights lawyer who has worked on the Close Rikers campaign and at the American Civil Liberties Union’s Smart Justice initiative announced his run for Manhattan DA in an exclusive article on The Appeal.

Marton, who grew up on the Upper West Side, is running on a platform focused on decarceration and tackling political corruption. He has pledged to reduce the borough’s jail population by 80 percent, expand the Major Economic Crimes Unit to fight corporate fraud and end solitary confinement.

Marton was an early supporter of public defender Tiffany Cabán in the race for Queens DA —a race that is still ongoing, as Cabán mounts a legal challenge against Queens Borough President Melinda Katz over invalidated ballots.

The race for Manhattan District Attorney is nearly two years away, but the field to challenge current DA Cyrus Vance Jr. in June 2021 is already beginning to emerge. Marton’s campaign announcement came nearly two months after former New York State Chief Deputy Attorney General Alvin Bragg announced his candidacy in June.

Vance has won recent elections by a landslide. In the 2009 general election, he received more than 90 percent of the vote after receiving the the endorsement of DA Robert Morgenthau, whom he replaced and who died last month.

In July 2018, Vance announced that his office would decline to prosecute most low-level marijuana offenses.

Marton and other activists say Vance has not gone far enough, however, in committing to decarceration in the borough.

Marton spoke with the Eagle about what his campaign for Manhattan DA, his support for Cabán and how lessons learned from her campaign could apply to his own underdog challenge in neighboring Manhattan.

Queens Daily Eagle: How does the jail population in Manhattan compare to that of other boroughs like Brooklyn and Queens?

Janos Marton: Manhattan has more defendants in jail than any other borough. That’s why I’ve called Cy Vance “New York’s leading jailer.” This office has been one of the harshest when it comes to prosecuting misdemeanors, is one of the least innovative offices when it comes to diversion programs, and hasn’t even scratched of things like restorative justice. Frankly one of the reasons that we are having such a complicated conversation about closing Rikers is that the Manhattan DA’s office sends so many people to jail pre-trial and it inflates the entire pre-trial population.

When you say innovative, what exactly do you mean? How would you innovate?

Number one, it’s going to start with implementing the pre-trial reforms that were passed. When it comes to bail, discovery and speedy trial, big reforms were passed in all three areas. But as we know the criminal-legal system doesn’t just operate off of a stat sheet, it operates off of the way each office that’s a cog in the system responds to the laws: who’s implementing the law and how they’re implementing it, and what instructions are being given to the assistant district attorneys is critical to whether these reforms actually have the effect that everybody was hoping for when we were beginning to pass these laws, which is to actually reduce the number of people who are held pre-trial.

As we do that we have to think about what kind of programs we’re creating for people who have various needs — people who have mental health needs, particularly those who have serious mental illnesses, for example. Our system is not equipped to heal people who have gotten caught up in the criminal legal system, including people who have done harm. I think to some extent, a District Attorney’s office, whether it’s Queens or Manhattan or anywhere else, can keep some people out of the system by declining to prosecute and there’s no question that we’re going to look at what are the various charges that we can decline to prosecute. But the reality is that the hard work will happen when we look at situations where harm was committed and yet there’s a better solution than putting a person in a cage.

I’m going to come back to the issues in a little bit. But first I want to hear from you about how you got here. What’s your own path and how has that influenced your platform?

I’m a born and raised Manhattanite. I grew up in a rent-controlled apartment in the Upper West Side with my mom and three kids. I was a child of immigrants and I grew up with a lot of diversity around me and that’s what I love about this city. I grew up in Rudy Giuliani’s ‘90s New York where the police operated with impunity and as a young man of color I was subject to the consequences of those policies. I’ve been stopped and frisked; I’ve been arrested; I’ve been held in jail. So on the one hand I experienced those things, but I was also blessed with privileges, as well. I was able to go to college where I learned to be an effective advocate. I was able to work and organize and come back to New York for law school and be a civil rights lawyer. For me the focus has always been on justice. Not just criminal justice but justice in general: taking on special interests and powerful people. When I was at the Moreland Commission, we investigated Republicans, Democrats, special interest groups, holding powerful folks accountable who were trying to corrupt our elections.

When I was managing the Close Rikers campaign we were trying not only to close the jail and decarcerate New York, but we also wanted to change how New Yorkers thought about a jail system that’s being run in their names, and work with communities — work with those who have been most directly impacted — to get that message out. Now I’m at the ACLU. I’ve been spending the last few years working on criminal justice issues on a national level in different cities and states around the country. That’s been working on issues as diverse as bail and sentencing law, parole, probation, prosecutor transparency. These are all things I’ve learned that I would like to bring to the Manhattan District Attorney’s office: recognizing what a powerful role [DAs] play in the system and how many different places in the system they can make positive changes if they’re focused on it.

How did you get connected to and involved with the Cában campaign in Queens?

My interest in that campaign goes back a while. During the Lippman Commission, which was a group study of question of whether Rikers should be closed, all the incumbent district attorneys testified before the Lippman commission about closing Rikers. Then-DA Richard Brown said: “There’s nothing wrong with Rikers Island that a coat of paint can’t fix.” Obviously that was pretty jarring. Myself and other advocates decided that day that we’d do what we could to get him taken out of office in 2019. As early as 2018, we had begun putting together a broad coalition of community groups that do work in Queens, political clubs, and individual activists who care a lot about this issue. What we were hoping to do was create an environment where whichever progressive challengers came forward, they would know that there was a community backing them and that they could run a bold campaign against the “Queens Machine.”

Now, Richard Brown obviously stepped down and then passed away. There had been rumors that he was going to step down for some time. We didn’t assume that we’d be running against him. The Machine chose their candidate and it turned out to be Melinda Katz. On a personal level I never met Tiffany Cabán until January of this year. I had heard positive things about her from mutual friends. So we sat down, had coffee and talked about her vision for the office and the campaign. I told her very early in the conversation that I didn’t need to hear much more about her policies. They sounded great, they sounded very much in line with my values. I wanted to hear how she planned to win this election, and how she planned to run the DA’s office when she won. It was really the thoughtfulness that she gave in responding to those two questions that led me to believe that she’d be the best DA for Queens. So I threw my support behind her the first week of February — one of the first folks to do so before petitioning started — and have been very happy with that decision ever since, regardless of the outcome of these legal proceedings.

I think she’s run an incredible campaign. I think she did exactly what she said exactly what she said she was going to, which was go into communities in Queens most affected by the criminal legal system and organize people, motivate people to care about who their next District Attorney is going to be. She and everybody else who worked on that campaign should be really proud of what they’ve accomplished already.

There have been a few places where she’s really moved the conversation. One has been on the decriminalization of sex work. Where do you fall on that question?

I’ve been really impressed by the Decrim movement and learned a lot personally in the last year seeing their leadership on this issue. I agree with Tiffany Cabán’s opinion on this issue, but more importantly, since this is an evolving issue in this city and in this state, I very much look forward to specifically talk to people who are leading that movement, sitting down with them and hearing their perspectives and seeing where those conversations are going, and make an educated policy based on that.

What is your plan for creating that groundswell among community members and especially community members in disadvantaged communities?

We have time and we have a plan, and we’ve got a lot of people already with us. What we’re going to do is we’re going to start off the campaign within a few weeks in communities that have been the most overpoliced in Manhattan, so East Harlem, Washington Heights, Lower East Side. We’re going to reach every community. We have a plan to reach every NYCHA building in Manhattan. Along the way we’re going to speak to people who do direct service work; we’re going to speak to community leaders, faith leaders. We have a really robust plan for outreach and we’re privileged to have almost two years to do that.

What have been your biggest takeaways from observing the Queens DA race?

I think I took away one tactical and one substantive thing. On the tactical side, the way the Cabán campaign came together was so impressive. But throughout the Spring, there was just a wish that we had more time. So we’re hoping to emulate some of the best policies of that campaign and just give ourselves a little bit more of a runway.

On a substantive side — and this is really important to me — I told you that when I met with Tiffany for the first time I was wholly supportive of the platform. I did not know at that time — and I think most people did not know — what the reaction of Queens residents would be to that platform. It was the boldest platform of any DA candidate that we’ve seen before. I’ve followed DA races around the country and what counts for reform for a DA is more moderate than what the Cabán campaign put forward and so I was legitimately curious how voters would respond. What struck me, whether it was canvassing or just watching her interact with the media, or just in general seeing her communicate in Queens is that she received very little pushback on the substance of her ideas. Now there were other critiques people made of her — some of which stuck, some of which didn’t — but I rarely saw voters say, “I’d be with you, but your criminal justice ideas go too far, I wish they were a little bit more watered down.” I think for people who understand that the criminal legal system is broken, which is a great many people, they are looking for somebody who has solutions and somebody who has the values and integrity to actually implement those solutions. That’s how she got to 40 percent. It wasn’t just DSA members. It was members throughout the community responding to this hopeful message about how to transform a system. I certainly learned a lot watching that and it really gave me the confidence to say that I could run this campaign for District Attorney without watering down my values, without watering down my message, because I truly believe that a lot of Manhattan voters are going to respond to these solutions for how to fix our system.

This interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity. The Manhattan District Attorney primary is June 22, 2021.