CBH Talk | The Changing Face of Progressive Brooklyn
Brooklyn’s reputation as one of America’s most progressive boroughs reflects a long history of demographic shifts, social movements, labor organizing, and vibrant urban culture. With each new wave of residents, Brooklynites have carried forward a legacy of progressivism, adapting it to new movements for justice, equality, and inclusion.
Join renowned demographer Joseph Salvo, distinguished political scientist John Mollenkopf, Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, and moderator Katie Honan of THE CITY, for a conversation about Brooklyn’s evolving population and progressive identity.
From its abolitionist roots to the popularity of FDR’s New Deal programs among working families and immigrant communities, Brooklyn has long been a crucible for social change. Postwar migration brought tens of thousands of Black Americans to central Brooklyn, building coalitions to fight segregation and housing discrimination. Later waves of artists, queer communities, and young professionals further shaped social progressivism as a defining feature of the borough. Most recently, the borough’s robust turnout helped elect Zohran Mamdani, with roughly 57 percent of Brooklyn voters supporting him.
While Brooklyn’s progressive legacy is deep, its contours are always shifting. How will gentrification and Brooklyn’s shrinking Black population influence its political landscape? In what ways will new multi-ethnic coalitions form and evolve? This esteemed panel will explore the dynamic dimensions of Brooklyn progressivism and consider what the future may hold.
Presented in connection with CBH’s exhibition “People Making Power: Politics in Brooklyn”
Participants
John Mollenkopf is Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center and directs its Center for Urban Research. His eighteen books (authored, co-authored, edited, or co-edited) analyze the impacts of race, ethnicity, and immigration on urban politics and urban policy with a focus on New York City as a laboratory for change.
Having received his PhD at Harvard University, he began his academic career teaching urban studies and public policy at Stanford University and studying pro-growth coalitions and their opponents. Upon moving to New York City he joined the Graduate Center in 1981. His subsequent scholarship has focused on New York City politics in comparative perspective and on understanding the political, social, and economic integration of immigrants into urban settings in the U.S. and Europe. Among his noteworthy books are Phoenix in the Ashes (Princeton University Press, 1991), a study of the rise and fall of the Koch coalition and its implications for city policy-making and Inheriting the City: The Children of Immigrants Come of Age (Russell Sage Foundation, 2009), co-authored with Philip Kasinitz, Mary Waters, and Jennifer Holdaway, which won the 2010 Distinguished Book Award from the American Sociological Association. His current book project explores how the rise of new immigrant-origin communities has reshaped New York City electoral politics since 2001.
Mollenkopf has been a consultant or advisor to many city agencies, including the Charter Revision Commissions of 1989-1991 that reformed city governance and the subsequent Districting Commissions that drew and redrew city council lines that have resulted in the most diverse legislative body in the city’s history.
Dr. Joseph Salvo is currently Chair of a 2030 Census National Working Group, whose purpose is to help ensure that the address list used for the next decennial census is accurate and complete for all areas of the nation. For more than three decades, Dr. Salvo served as Director of the Population Division at the New York City Department of City Planning, where he ushered the city through four decennial censuses, and most recently was a Fellow at the University of Virginia as part of a 2030 Census methods team. He has testified before Congress, been an advisor to the U.S. Census Bureau, served on multiple panels at the National Academy of Sciences, and worked as an expert in litigation related to the 2020 census. He has co-authored articles on settlement patterns of race/ethnic groups, census history and methods, and survey evaluation. He received M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Fordham University, is a recipient of the Sloan Public Service Award from the Fund for the City of New York, a recipient of the Population Association of America’s Public Service Award, and is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and Elected Member of the International Statistical Institute.
Antonio Reynoso is Brooklyn’s 20th Borough President. The son of two Dominican immigrants, Antonio was born and raised in Los Sures, Williamsburg, just three blocks down from where he lives today with his wife and two sons. In 2021, Antonio became the youngest Borough President elected to a four-year term, the first Latino to hold the office in the borough, and the first Dominican to be elected as a Borough President in NYC. Since then, he’s launched a history-making maternal health agenda and released The Comprehensive Plan for Brooklyn, New York City’s largest planning effort for a healthy, housed Brooklyn. Antonio previously served as Council Member for the 34th Council District, representing portions of Bushwick and Williamsburg in Brooklyn and Ridgewood in Queens.
Katie Honan is a senior reporter at the nonprofit news site THE CITY and the co-host of the FAQ NYC podcast. Before joining THE CITY, she was the City Hall reporter for The Wall Street Journal, reported on neighborhoods in Queens for DNAinfo New York, and was a social media and web editor at NBC 4 New York. She's a lifelong Queens resident.
