Born and raised in Los Sures, Brook­lyn, Deb­bie Med­i­na worked for 30 years at the afford­able hous­ing orga­ni­za­tion South­side Unit­ed HDFC — Los Sures before run­ning for New York state Sen­ate as a demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ist. Her bid for the Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­na­tion in the 18th dis­trict is a push against real estate inter­ests: Her oppo­nent, Mar­tin Malavé Dilan, claims to be anti-gen­tri­fi­ca­tion, but has tak­en at least 60,000 in dona­tions from real estate groups.

'Everyone should have affordable housing. Socialism means that resources belong to the people. Not to the corporations or rich people.'

Against this, Med­i­na has mobi­lized a mul­ti-eth­nic, work­ing class coali­tion around the one thing that every­one in Brook­lyn (except the very rich) is mad about: hous­ing. Med­i­na is in favor of rent con­trol and com­mu­ni­ty land trusts, or CLTs, non-prof­its that buy prop­er­ty and lease it out for afford­able hous­ing. She would finance the CLTs with the ​“man­sion tax,” cur­rent­ly 1 per­cent on prop­er­ties worth $1 mil­lion or more — a com­mit­ment to resource redis­tri­b­u­tion that feels dis­tinct­ly social­ist. Fit­ting­ly, Med­i­na wants to make New York City’s com­mu­ni­ty (CUNY) col­leges tuition-free, as they were until 1976, and to roll back sub­way fares, which have gone up three times in six years.

When she ran for the same state Sen­ate seat in 2014, Med­i­na lost nar­row­ly, receiv­ing 42 per­cent of the vote. This year, bol­stered by Bernie Sanders’ social­ist cam­paign and social­ist Kshama Sawant’s suc­cess­ful 2013 run for Seat­tle City Coun­cil, Med­i­na has been endorsed by U.S. Rep. Nydia Velazquez, New York City Coun­cil­man Anto­nio Reynoso, the New Kings Democ­rats and the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Social­ists of America.

The result of the Sep­tem­ber 13 New York State pri­ma­ry could be a lit­mus test of the Left’s abil­i­ty to build a social­ist move­ment beyond the Bernie campaign.

Although Med­i­na has received glow­ing cov­er­age in the inde­pen­dent press, the cor­po­rate media has been less kind. In July, the New York Post report­ed that Medina’s son, Euge­nio Tor­res, had been con­vict­ed of killing his girlfriend’s 3‑year old. In the arti­cle, Med­i­na admit­ted to beat­ing Tor­res when he was a child. While con­demn­ing domes­tic abuse ​“of any kind,” Medina’s cam­paign is hop­ing to use the arti­cle to raise aware­ness of the chron­ic stres­sors (e.g. pover­ty) that can push peo­ple towards vio­lence, and to make men­tal health­care avail­able to work­ing class com­mu­ni­ties. As Med­i­na puts it, ​“that kind of help should be free.”

You were a hous­ing orga­niz­er in South Brook­lyn for 30 years. What were some for­ma­tive experiences?

When start­ed work­ing at Los Sures, I start­ed going out to dif­fer­ent build­ings, and I saw the con­di­tions. The stairs didn’t have no lights! And urine, and human feces on the stair­ways. Why do we have to be treat­ed this way?

We had this one par­tic­u­lar land­lord — vot­ed worst land­lord in New York City. And he would go to the build­ing in the night­time and turn off the boil­er and water when it was cold.

We had a ten­ants asso­ci­a­tion, and res­i­dents would take turns guard­ing and mak­ing sure that he didn’t come in. When he would, they would chase him out. We had all four of his build­ings go on rent strike. And he had to leave. It was one of the biggest victories.

As a state sen­a­tor, what kinds of hous­ing poli­cies would you push for?

Rent freezes and rent roll­backs. Com­mu­ni­ty land trusts.

I’d close all of the loop­holes that land­lords are using to evict ten­ants, like vacan­cy de-con­trol, which allows land­lords to ille­gal­ly raise the rents once ten­ants move out, and pref­er­en­tial rent, which land­lords use to hide ille­gal­ly high rents.

I’m also real­ly excit­ed about get­ting peo­ple orga­nized. Bring­ing com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers to com­mu­ni­ty board meet­ings and ten­ant asso­ci­a­tions, orga­nize rent strikes, meet with hous­ing author­i­ties and tell them, this is what we want from you. The gov­ern­ment belongs to the peo­ple. When you vote for all elect­ed offi­cials, you’re vot­ing for the per­son who is speak­ing for you. And if they are not say­ing what you want them to say, then you will remove them.

I want peo­ple to real­ize how much pow­er they have. And I’m going to do that by bring­ing my orga­niz­er tac­tics into office — going into build­ings, hold­ing meet­ings at night so that peo­ple can come after work. Pol­i­tics shouldn’t just be for peo­ple who have time to participate.

How would you keep big devel­op­ers out of neighborhoods?

De Blasio’s ​“afford­able hous­ing” plan has this 80 – 20 law: if devel­op­ers want to build, then 80 per­cent can be lux­u­ry and 20 per­cent has to be afford­able. And I don’t think that’s right.

The reverse should be true: if devel­op­ers want to come into our com­mu­ni­ty, it should be 70 per­cent afford­able and 30 per­cent for your luxury.

That would keep them away.

That sounds great. And also very socialist.

Every­one should have afford­able hous­ing. Social­ism means that resources belong to the peo­ple. Not to the cor­po­ra­tions or rich people.

Gen­tri­fi­ca­tion is the oppo­site of social­ism. It takes afford­able hous­ing and every­thing that comes with it — job secu­ri­ty, good health — and makes them into things that few­er and few­er peo­ple can have. And my com­peti­tor, Dilan — that’s what he wants to do. He gets thou­sands of dol­lars from real estate companies.

And I think that’s what makes my poli­cies social­ist — because they’re about say­ing, no: the peo­ple should have access to all of this.

Like, look at what hap­pened with my son. My son start­ed smok­ing angel dust. And I was des­per­ate. There was four times that he was arrest­ed, and I would have to leave my job and go out search­ing for him every now and then. I went out to drug deal­ers with a poster of my son, and I put all my infor­ma­tion in it, and said, look. I’m the moth­er. Don’t sell drugs to this boy.

I’m a poor per­son. I was work­ing full-time. I had four kids. I could not afford to pay to send him to a good rehab place. But what if I could’ve? What if good men­tal health­care was some­thing that peo­ple could actu­al­ly afford?

For me, social­ism would also mean social­ist men­tal health­care, men­tal health pro­grams that are free. And not just for addicts, but for their fam­i­lies, so that it doesn’t get to the extreme of what I was doing. Because I don’t think beat­ing your child is right.

How do your con­stituents and peo­ple in your com­mu­ni­ty feel about socialism?

Social­ism isn’t just a polit­i­cal par­ty or move­ment — it’s a form of com­mu­ni­ty liv­ing that we’ve prac­ticed all our lives.

Peo­ple think of social­ism as a West­ern, Euro­pean thing, but it isn’t. There is a his­to­ry of Puer­to Rican social­ism — just look at the Puer­to Rican Social­ist Par­ty [a Marx­ist-Lenin­ist inde­pen­dence par­ty that was influ­en­tial in the 1960s and 1970s].

Or look at the Young Lords. Peo­ple think of it as a gang, but they were actu­al­ly doing things for the com­mu­ni­ty, forc­ing the city to do garbage pick-up, or protest­ing child­hood lead and racist hos­pi­tal treat­ment. That was great.

As for the peo­ple who say they’re against social­ism — if they’re poor, and then they start see­ing what social­ism starts doing for them — get­ting them health­care, hous­ing — they’ll be for that move­ment, what­ev­er it’s called.