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By Felicia Persaud |
The council member says he's been meeting with police captains and officers in his area as well as church leaders in an effort to begin the process of dialogue. "What I'm planning to do is to have all the churches have a special service for the precincts so the barriers can be broken," said Stewart. "That is one way we can foster that type of relationship that is free from fear. I feel if we do that, police brutality would be secondary."
He added, "Things happen because of fear. If we can break that barrier, there'll be less fear on the part of the police as well as the community."
Council member Stewart says he's spent a lot of his time since January, attending various community meetings and events, particularly the community board, precinct council and block association meetings. He also is working hard to ensure area residents know the location of his district office between Avenue I and East 34th Street on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn, so that they can lodge complaints or obtain information on a wide range of issues - from immigration and natur
alization
to child care resources.He's also in favor of a Caribbean Caucus. "I feel we should have a caucus to talk about things that affect us here as well as in the region, (because) the Caribbean islands do not exist by themselves. When we sneeze in America, Caribbean people catch a cold," said Stewart.
But while police brutality and immigration are areas of concern to him, Stewart says he's also interested in helping young professionals who now find themselves tagged with the heavy burden of inflated school loans. "A lot of people who have gone to professional schools borrowed money but by the time they finished, they end up paying twice or thrice as much and lose whatever assets they have," said the council member. "We need to look at those lending policies and interest rates and come up with some laws to prevent that because that's a form of robbery."
Council member Stewart, who sits on the Aging, Contracts, Health, Housing & Buildings and Women's Issues committees, says protecting seniors is another issue of importance to him. "My goal is to ensure that senior get proper health care as well as care in general," says the council member.
Stewart says he's joined other Brooklyn council members in introducing, among other bills, one urging for the formation of an Interagency Coordinating Council on Health.
He says he's also working to ensure the process of awarding contracts be streamlined so that minority contractors in Brooklyn can take advantage of the bidding process without worrying about high insurance premiums. "One of the barriers (faced by the contractors) is that insurance is high. Without the insurance they cannot get bonding so they cannot get the contract," said Stewart.
Additionally, the council member reiterated his commitment to the education of youth in the district, an issue that he focused on during his campaign for the office. Stewart is fast portraying himself as a major advocate of adoption. Not only is he in favor of church/precinct adoptions but he also wants colleges in the borough to adopt schools in the area.
"All high schools should be adopted by colleges who should nurture those students to get into college," said Stewart. "Also we want the unions to work in conjunction with these schools, giving apprenticeships to youth from age 13 and up in the summer."
Asked about his stance on abolishing the Board of Education, Stewart is quick to remark that the board "is just extra bureaucracy." But he also does not support handing control of the body solely to the mayor. Instead, he says, "I feel anyone who runs the system should be accountable to the people. Not as the board is being run right now."
But while the Board of Education debate has finally been resolved in favor of the mayor, right now and budget cuts are fast becoming the order of the day, Stewart is adamant that funding can be found to support programs for youth.
"We spend billions of dollars building new prisons and incarcerating these young people. Instead why not use the same money to look at prevention," said Stewart. "Because for every dollar we spend on a child in education right now, we spend 10 times that on incarceration. If we reverse that, we can make a big difference."