CUNY Macaulay Honors College 2023 Commencement Speech

Congratulations Macaulay graduates! I am so very proud of you. The CUNY student has a special place in my heart. When I’m asked, what’re your priorities as a Council Member? I always mention: CUNY students and CUNY faculty and staff. CUNY students run this City. Embrace this hugely important accomplishment and the oath to strengthen democracy, from your block to the important rooms that’ve never included anyone like you before. CUNY has prepared you to lead and do so with empathy and joy. You are ready for wherever you’re headed next, because CUNY has ignited that important, urgent spark for you all to be ambassadors of a City that needs you.

Thank you Dean Dara Byrne and to all who contributed to this moment, including every parent, friend, beloved. I know this accomplishment is shared — you worked hard but you were supported. It is an honor to join you this afternoon to deliver words to remind you, you have advocates rooting for your journey, and not in the success and failure binary that further reinforces only the individual, but rather with acceptance of your authentic selves and the continuum of opportunities, setbacks, and lessons. You are cared for by many networks from your community to this City’s Council Members (and 19 of us are CUNY alum!), and beyond.

I was in the fifth grade on September 11th, 2001, a day that changed what it meant to grow up Muslim in Brooklyn. My Muslim peers and I were bullied in school and around our Kensington neighborhood walking to the mosque, while playing on the block with our colorful hijabs, flowy shalwar kameez. I saw hate lashed out against my community. Not knowing what else to do, I brought together a group of neighborhood kids to write a letter to then President George W. Bush, asking him to consider the safety of Muslim kids.

Even though I instinctively knew the importance of civic engagement, I never thought someone like me — a Muslim girl from Brooklyn — would stand before you today, having brought in a seat at the table, as member of the City Council, fighting against fascism and championing an anti-racist, feminist NYC that has all our backs.

I am one of 51 Council Members in the most powerful municipal government in America. In addition to being the first Muslim woman elected to the City Council, in 2021 I became the first of two South Asians ever elected to the City Council, and the first Bangladeshi in office from New York (Bangladeshis, we love CUNY! And a message to our Bangladeshi parents: proti’ta Ma Baba’ke oshongko dhonnobaad apnader porisrom ebong bhalobashar jonno — apnar baccha’ke support korte thakben — tara ek din ei shorkar, ei shohor chalabe!). And I am the first woman to represent my district. I am Co-chair of the Progressive Caucus; Chair of the Immigration Committee; and if you’re in the neighborhoods that stretch from Kensington, Borough Park, Windsor Terrace, Park Slope, Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, Gowanus, the Columbia Street Waterfront, and some of Boerum Hill — then I am honored to be serving you, our community, and our City as Council Member. Oh, and I’m a millennial. 32 years old.

But the possibility of enrolling in college, let alone being in the Scholars Program at Brooklyn College (like the former Director of Scholars, now Director of Macaulay Brooklyn Dr. Lisa Schwebel said to me over email: to be sure, it takes a Scholars Program grad to address Macaulay students!!!), felt out of reach as a senior in high school, when I was diagnosed with Lupus.

As my health deteriorated, I was pulled out of school, and my best friends rotated bringing my homework to the Emergency Room at Brooklyn’s Maimonides Hospital.

When the stay became indefinite, they stopped bringing homework assignments. I was honestly really grateful, because I was not trying to do homework in the hospital!

During that moment of indefinite hospitalization at 17, and despite holding court and treating the hospital room like an extension of my bedroom in Little Bangladesh, Kensington, I didn’t think I’d make it.

Before being transported to Maimonides Hospital, I came into the Coney Island Hospital Emergency Room uninsured and unaware of what being sick in NYC looked like. I kept the Lupus magazine the rheumatologist brought with her to tell me I had Lupus, rereading articles and jotting down transliterations in Bangla to explain both the doctors’ plan and my pain to my parents, who didn’t speak English.

I was not at all prepared to describe symptoms that I never knew I’d experience; in parts of the body, I had no idea I’d ever need to understand in Bangla. I wasn’t prepared to translate feelings of hopelessness, sadness, loneliness, and heartache.

I realized too, that at home we never actually treated being sick like being sick. I went to school on days I didn’t feel great. My parents never missed work. While I scribbled translations, it also didn’t occur to me that the hospital by default should provide language access for my parents to fully understand how our lives will change. But I had no choice. When I returned home, I went into the rhythm of a normal 12th grader and applied to colleges in NYC.

As I wrote my college essay, I was fixated thinking about what the ride to school would entail. Leaving my home was an ordeal. I could not walk nor take the stairs without debilitating pain. The station near my house had a newly installed elevator, but the Bay Parkway stop on the F to transfer to the B6 bus to get to Brooklyn College did not. I imagined scenarios of me asking the random rider for a seat in the crowded cart. But what if I fell, would there be help? Would riders be upset if the train needed to stop because I was experiencing a medical emergency? The only way I could get around these hurdles was with Access-A-Ride, our City’s para-transit program. I was denied. That’s when I took to writing. I knew no stories of young women living with chronic illness, so I wrote about exploring the hurdles navigating City services as a disabled youth, and later, I co-founded the Muslim Writers Collective to create community with other young Muslim artists and writers. Our Collective was political. As children of a post-9/11 New York City, how can we not be? This was our space to share stories of joy and resistance, so that we could define our own stories, while continuing to organize with other communities around a shared collective struggle against the forces of white supremacy.

At Brooklyn College, my survival as a disabled student was tied to the community of advocates and peers who befriended me alongside the urgent campus resources and targeted services, like the Women’s Center, the Center for Student Disability Services, many of which were and continue to be at risk of disinvestment and budget cuts. On campus, I was known for my radio show — it had many funny names like Shut Up & Listen, Three Broke Girls, The Girls Room… I enjoyed the company of artists and activists. I was curious. I wanted to connect with others authentically. The radio show on campus allowed me to do that.

It was at Brooklyn College where I witnessed the traumatizing surveillance of Muslim students — the silence of the administration and the powerful student-professor organizing around safety. We deserve to feel safe on campus. We deserve a campus that isn’t complicit in the punishment of some student communities. I learned how my struggles and pains were intimately tied to those of my peers who came from every part of NYC. I joined the protests and uprisings of many student communities on campus. I learned not to sit quietly or on the sidelines. We are CUNY students — we are tasked to speak up. We are an essential part of the NYC story and the pursuit for a stronger democracy.

I felt strongly about this mission as a student who spent many late nights on campus, supported by dozens of tough mentors like Sau-Fong Au, Rachel Lorinda Jennings, Helen Perera, Seraphina Tisch, Professors Rosamond King, Andrew Arlig, Swapna Banerjee, Simone Kolysh, Namita Manohar, Lisa Schwebel, Zinga Fraser — I can keep going!

Now, I took breaks — I’ve had to be flexible and practice resilience along the way. I started my college career in a science program thinking I’d pursue a PhD in biology — the program was entirely slashed in my second year. After getting rejected for para-transit services, I made the expensive choice to live within walking distance to campus. I’d take strong pain relievers and set out for the day, but couldn’t focus nor was I feeling better. I was however much closer to Maimonides Hospital, I’d hop on the B11 bus, which no longer had stairs, and get dropped off in front of the hospital. But over the course of college, I went from wearing wigs to seeing my hair grow back after the aggressive chemotherapy, and my body transforming into a cyborg. I underwent major surgeries including two full hip replacements. So I was forced to take full semesters off for these procedures and to fully recover. I straddled being full and part time given the unpredictable nature of Lupus.

I also made the decision to instead pursue a degree in Women’s and Gender Studies. Choosing Women’s and Gender Studies was a tough decision — I don’t think I told my parents until close to graduation, which for me happened after 5 long years! A daughter of immigrants studying what now? What job is that? I came back stronger each time. CUNY encouraged and empowered me to chart my own path, and not only make tough decisions, but to celebrate the tough decisions, like studying a discipline that actually needs more women like me in it.

And I’m grateful to have welcomed with discipline and curiosity the many opportunities after graduating to explore being a part of the necessary work to shape a more representative democracy, from organizing Asian public housing residents in their fight for language access, to advocating for additional public plazas, especially for immigrant women and families and the creation of Avenue C Plaza in my community where we host an annual feminist Iftar during Ramadan, to becoming a staffer in my predecessor’s office during the Trump era to build power in the face of Muslim bans, uptick in anti-Semitism, and the rise in hate violence.

I continue to be on the cyborg path. During the Trump era, I got my left shoulder fully replaced. And in the COVID era and at the start of my first year as a Council Member, I had to get my left hip replaced for the second time. I shared updates about my surgery openly with my constituents while continuing to lead with my team, and advocating for broader remote work options, while recovering. Now, stories like mine are rare in politics — we don’t witness enough leaders pushing for inclusivity and disability justice. I’m in a field of work that requires a constant on, like many fields you might enter. But I’ve been charting a path that says I am allowed to be interrupted, I can slow down, I can carve out my own path rooted in care for myself with the backing of a loving community.

Next month marks a year and a half as a Council Member, and there is so much that I am proud of. I brought on a solid team of dedicated and passionate, and mostly first-time, public servants, including current and former CUNY students, like the brilliant Musarrat Lamia, also Bangladeshi, who graduated from John Jay the year I was elected. This small team looks after the district daily and thoughtfully supports one another to problem-solve some of the toughest issues impacting our district and the City at large, leading with compassion.

As the Chair of the Immigration Committee, my hearing to better understand the Mayor’s operations to support the influx of asylum seekers prompted the closure of the tent city built on Randall’s Island. My team and I effectively used the committee to highlight to the public the Mayoral administration’s inefficiencies to welcome asylum seekers with dignity.

In the days following the reversal of Roe v. Wade, my team and I secured $1M in funding for abortion procedures and practical support. This is the largest investment taken on by a municipality.

I helped deliver $10 million for childcare for our undocumented families.

My legislation to mandate composting passes in June! Currently, NYC administers an opt-in model for composting services only available in some neighborhoods. My bill would require organics collection in all neighborhoods and allow New Yorkers to participate without barriers. This environmental justice measure is the easiest way for our City to tackle climate change and reduce emissions in landfills.

I am also working to expand paid sick and safe leave to include gig workers, particularly the 140K app-based workers across the rideshare and food delivery sectors. This legislation directly impacts our immigrant and essential workers who continued to work through COVID without any guaranteed protections or paid time off.

Over the course of my time now in this role, the lesson I continue to learn is discernment. What is fair and just? How do we discern that? I have had to disrupt the order, which is a legacy from my time as a CUNY student. I have been working toward being able to discern and make politically courageous decisions for my district and this City.

I want to pass this lesson on to you — in this time of accelerated news across many mediums, it is tough to come out and know how to ground in truth. Begin to practice discernment. It will require that you slow down. It will force you to be in conflict and debate. Ask the tough questions. Demonstrate that at your core is care for your community.

I look forward to building a City so strong and compassionate together. I love CUNY, and will continue to fight against the Mayor’s austerity budget that cuts millions from CUNY. CUNY has always had a legacy of student activism, affirming Black and brown students’ lived experiences and our right to dignity, care, and a world-class education. Let’s ensure CUNY is a sanctuary campus across all schools. That CUNY refuses ICE access to campus or student records. And that we ultimately make CUNY free again.