Meet Jabari

Jabari’s Story

Jabari Brisport is the State Senator for New York’s 25th District. He is a third-generation Caribbean-American Brooklynite. Born in Bed-Stuy and raised in Prospect Heights, Jabari has seen his community struggle with displacement, policing, and a lack of investment in the basic needs that support a dignified life, such as housing and healthcare. His experiences as a queer, Black public school teacher—as well as a proud socialist, union member, and child of an immigrant—spurred him to run for office to fight for working-class people. In 2020, Jabari was elected, making history as the first openly queer person of color in the New York State Senate. In 2022, Jabari is running for re-election to continue fighting the systemic changes that we urgently need.

Jabari’s First Term

Jabari is the Chair of the Children and Families Committee. As our State Senator, he’s standing up against powerful interests in Albany who only want to protect corporations and the wealthy. He’s fought for the funding, services, and policy changes that New Yorkers need to survive and thrive, especially in times of crisis. Jabari is a vocal advocate of raising taxes on the rich and of policies that place the needs of working-class people above corporate profits, including free universal healthcare, universal access to housing, free universal child care, and the cancelation of rent and mortgage arrears accumulated during the COVID-19 pandemic.

During his first term in office, Jabari helped:

• Ensure billions in new funding for public schools
• Secure tenant relief funds and restrict foreclosures and evictions during the ongoing COVID-19 crisis
• End the use of long-term solitary confinement in New York State
• Legalize cannabis
• Establish a first-of-its-kind excluded workers fund for workers left out of state stimulus payments during the pandemic
• Win the first tax increase on billionaires in over a decade
• Restrict the imprisonment of individuals for parole violations
• Overturn the discriminatory ‘Walking While Trans’ law
• Pass legislation that automatically seals the records of youth in family court, allows for the adjustment of sentences of young people, and provides for the issuance of diplomas to incarcerated youth

Why Jabari Is Running for Re-Election

Jabari is running for re-election because he knows that we don’t have to accept bread crumbs and inaction from our government. Real change is possible when we demand that big issues are met with big solutions, like passing the New York Health Act, the Build Public Renewables Act, Good Cause Eviction, and the Universal Child Care Act, a bill that Jabari recently introduced after speaking to over a thousand parents and child care providers on a statewide listening tour.

Jabari’s vision is of a transparent and responsive government that serves all people. As our elected representative, he remains part of a massive socialist movement to fight for a more just future. He rejects the idea that we cannot afford programs that provide for working-class people and the most vulnerable in our communities. Jabari will continue to fight for climate justice, to empower workers, to provide a home for every New Yorker, to end mass incarceration, to invest in public schools, and to create a world where our institutions’ policies and actions affirm that Black Lives Matter.