Next Step, Congress: Claire Valdez Rides a Movement Moment

After propelling Zohran Mamdani into the mayor’s seat last year, New York City DSA is trying to put two of its members in Congress this year— Darializa Avila Chevalier in NY-13 in Upper Manhattan and the West Bronx and Claire Valdez in NY-7 which has been repped by the retiring Nydida Velasquez since 1993. Velasquez has anointed Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso as her successor. Mayor Zohran Mamdani and NYC-DSA’s army of door-to-door canvassers are backing Valdez who represents a Queens Assembly district in Albany. If successful, she will take the helm of what is arguably the most leftwing congressional district in the country. This interview was edited for length and clarity. 

The Indypendent: You’ve made your previous experience as a low-wage worker and a union activist a major theme of our campaign? Why do you think those experiences matter and how would it inform your work in Congress?

Claire Valdez: The experience of being a low-wage worker and feeling trapped in your job and feeling you have no control over your life is a very common one in New York City and in the United States. The less common experience is having the opportunity to organize with your co-workers for more and to actually have power to be able to sit at the bargaining table to win better wages and working conditions, and feel like you aren’t alone, and that you do actually have political control, not just over your work life, but over your whole life. That’s an experience that I want as many people as possible to have.

The federal government can also play a role in making sure that working people have dignified, safe, stable housing, dignified, safe, stable jobs, health care that is free at the point of service, and that we aren’t tying ourselves to these forever wars and to genocide and spending billions of dollars on things like ICE that don’t build stability and safety in our communities. We need to make sure that people have real power in their lives, and have the federal government be a part of that. 

What are some memories that stand out from your time in your union?

I remember walking into my first union meeting and seeing 200-300 people in this auditorium, talking about our contract — about what we thought we deserved, and if we thought we could win more. It was just a profoundly democratic experience. It showed that I wasn’t fighting for myself by myself, that I had 500 coworkers that were standing with me at any given moment. I was proud to stand with them too.

You moved to New York City a decade ago and have been derided as an outsider by some of your critics. What are your thoughts on this kind of New York nativism?

People come to New York City from all over the world for all kinds of different reasons.The story of New York’s 7th congressional district is one of artists and workers and immigrants who have made beautiful communities and are being displaced by private equity and the real estate industry who have identified our neighborhoods and our homes as vehicles for profit. So many establishment Democrats have taken their donations, have made partnerships with these entities that are pushing people out. We’re the ones fighting against a system that has displaced many people over decades. As socialists, we’re the ones saying that we need really strong tenant protection so people can stay in their homes. We’re the ones who are saying we’re not going to take a dime from real estate.

So you believe older residents and newer residents have more in common than what divides them?

Absolutely. We’re all being displaced by the same forces. We don’t build power by trying to pit neighbors against each other. We know who the enemies are. It’s A&E and Bronstein and Pinnacle. These huge development corporations that are coming in and trying to build luxury towers over our working-class neighborhoods. Those are our enemies, and when we organize together, we can win against them. 

You and other DSA electeds joined protests against Israel’s war of annihilation in Gaza from its onset in October 2023. What was that like to go up against the whole political and media establishment that backs Israel to the hilt? 

It was a really difficult political moment. The Netanyahu government was making explicitly genocidal statements. They intended to carry out a genocide, and that is what has unfolded over the last two and a half years. Many Democrats either put their heads in the sand or condemned the protesters. People have come around now that political opinion has shifted on this. But, that should not have taken more than 60,000 people dying and being murdered.

The federal government spends about $1 trillion per year on the military. Your website talks about cutting that spending by a fraction. What kind of fraction do you have in mind?

Well, we’ll see. I would like to see it cut

10%? 20%? 50%?

I’d like to see it cut very substantially. Bernie Sanders has talked about a 10% cut. I think we can go further, especially with a trillion dollars. Imagine what we could spend hundreds of billions of dollars on in the United States every year. Medicare for All, ending homelessness, making sure that everyone has nutritious food, rehabilitating our public housing. And it’s not just the public benefits that we can shore up, but the new ones that we can bring into being if we had that kind of funding and reoriented the way that we think about our budget away from the idea that our safety requires militarism and and death and destruction, when it actually requires public education, public health care, public housing, and things like that.

Visit indypendent.org for more interviews with insurgent candidates running in the June 23 Democratic primary including Darializa Avila Chevalier, Conrad Blackburn, Aber Kawas and David Orkin.