I’ll admit it: when the media class recently started talking about “Woke 1,” I didn’t know what they meant. As political pundits used the catchphrase to summarize a movement, the label seemed to frame the height of pro-abolition organizing in New York City as an era to be neatly closed, filed away, and moderated. Or at worst forgotten.

As someone whose family has been impacted by the criminal legal system, I can’t just file it away as a moment in time. And as the Democratic Nominee in a district that is disproportionately policed, where ICE has increased its activity, and where poverty is often criminalized I simply won’t. Without accountability, we will continue to see an increase in state violence and collaboration between state institutions to advance it. NYPD officers can continue to informally collude with ICE whether it’s blocking New Yorkers from getting contact information from detained neighbors in Jackson Heights, escorting ICE out of a Brooklyn hospital, or illegally putting someone in a chokehold.

For many who have spent their lives organizing on the ground, justice isn’t a fleeting electoral cycle. It cannot be dismissed. As a lifelong New Yorker, social worker, and community organizer, my fight began years ago participating in “A Day Without Immigrants” in response to Bush-era anti-immigrant policy. Years later, following the murder of George Floyd, I took to the streets to march alongside New Yorkers across our city for Black lives. For us, that moment was a clear directive to address state violence by reducing funding from the bloated NYPD budget and reinvesting those dollars into what actually keeps us safe: housing, healthcare, and employment services to name a few. The research is detailed: well-resourced communities are safer communities.

As the media establishment attempts to convince us that recent leftist momentum requires a shift back toward moderation, working-class New Yorkers are proving otherwise. Recent electoral victories from Zohran Mamdani’s election to the victories of progressive and democratic socialist candidates this past primary cycle demonstrate that New Yorkers want a bold, unapologetic left movement. They want leaders who will fight for Medicare for All, to abolish ICE, and divest from foreign wars. Voters aren’t asking for retreat; they are demanding structural transformation.

To answer that call, we must recognize that the criminal legal system operates at the direct intersection of the struggles for immigrant justice and criminal justice. They are not separate battles. They are the same fight to demilitarize our neighborhoods and make our streets safer.

At the local level, we must end police violence and restrict any form of (including informal) local law enforcement collusion with federal immigration enforcement, ensuring that NYC is a true haven. 

At the state level, we must pass the New York for All Act, deliver parole justice, enact meaningful sentencing reform, and fiercely defend the HALT Act and Raise the Age laws from bad-faith attacks.

At the national level, we need Democratic leaders to support calls to abolish ICE and dismantle an immigration system built on criminalization and cages.

We have seen what happens when we remove the pedal from the gas on any of our fights for social justice. In New York, we witnessed once desperately called for critical civil rights legislation like discovery reform, a ban on solitary confinement, and even mask bans of ICE agents get either attacked, rolled back, or challenged in the courts. 

Whenever the left delivers major electoral wins, establishment voices insist we must moderate. But looking at the foundation that was built before many of us, I’m not certain that “Woke 1” was crazy as much as it was necessary, urgent, and a signal of the critical work that still lies ahead. We will not win a safer, more equitable New York by backing down; we will win by standing firm and continuing our work towards racial equity and fighting for Black lives.

Brian Romero is the Democratic Nominee for New York State Assembly District 34 which encompasses Astoria, Corona, East Elmhurst, Jackson Heights, and Woodside in Queens. He was endorsed by the New York Working Families Party.