By SAMUEL MORTEL
Current Comptroller and 2025 NYC mayoral candidate Brad Lander was the main speaker at the Decarbonize CUNY Town Hall on Tuesday, Sept. 24, where a pair of protesters pressed him on his commitment to climate justice.
“Decarbonize CUNY” is a climate justice campaign at the city university, led by The Environmental Justice Working Group of CUNY’s professional union, the Professional Staff Congress. It aims to reduce the fossil fuel reliance of more than 300 publicly owned CUNY buildings. The group has held a number of town halls across various CUNYs in the past month, including LaGuardia Community College, City Tech, John Jay, College of Staten Island, Queens College, and of course, a September 24th town hall at Hunter College which featured the Comptroller. Lander has been labeled as Mayor Adams’ “archrival” in a June 2023 Politico article and his campaign to take Adams’ spot is already in full swing. One of Brad Lander’s main issues is climate and to help outline what he’s already done and plans to do in order to combat the climate crisis, Lander took the trip to Hunter’s Tuesday Town Hall.
Lander was introduced with a short speech by Professor Thomas Angotti, who actually taught Lander when he attended the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College. Angotti had nothing but kind words to say of his former student, describing him as a “CUNY supporter” and “champion of affordable housing.” When it was time for Lander himself to take the mic, he only got about 30 seconds into his speech before he was interrupted by a pair of climate activists, each with their own large signs and demanding the comptroller answer for his various “failings” in sufficiently handling the climate crisis. The protesters later identified themselves as members of “New York Communities for Change” and “350 NYC,” two nonprofit organizations specifically fixated on climate action and combating climate change. It was this issue where they felt that Lander, despite how much he champions the cause, has not been working nearly hard enough.
This, predictably, created a small amount of chaos in the room. Some participants, seated in the same row as the protesters just a few seats down, were asked to get out of their seats by security personnel, ready to walk into the row and remove the disrupters at any moment. It was as if the room was split into two separate groups.
Some members in the audience showed frustration with the disruption, yelling at the two and aiming to shut them up as soon as possible. Others in the room, however, were more tolerant of the demonstration. Notably, one member of the latter group was climate justice activist and former Brooklyn College professor Nancy Romer, who was seated just a row behind the activists. Romer was urging the security personnel to settle down and allow the men to stay. Lander himself seemed to lean towards this position, trying to stay level-headed and assuring the protesters that they would have a chance to challenge him all they wanted as long as they let him finish with his speech. This seemed to satiate the pair, who folded their signs, sat back in their seats, and chose to let the Comptroller resume his speech until they got another opportunity to berate him. Nonetheless, they didn’t miss their opportunity to get one last word in, “Walk your talk, Brad. Walk your talk.”
Lander then carried on with his speech where he went into the things he’s accomplished and projects he’s spearheaded in his tenure as Comptroller to shift towards a cleaner New York City. Addressing the concerns of his protesters, Lander stated, “Some folks want us to go further, as they should,” but still made it clear he believes he’s put in the work and attempted to convey that he will continue putting in the work if he’s elected as mayor next November. However, this point wasn’t convincing to the two protesters, who continued to grill Lander in the Q&A segment, particularly pressuring him to end NYC’s involvement with larger, more notorious investment management companies like Blackrock and KKR & Co. Inc. and instead shift that money into smaller, more clean managers. They put this responsibility squarely on Lander’s shoulders, calling him out as the “lead decision maker.” Lander, however, attempted to downplay his role and illustrate that the process is more complicated than the pair were making it out to be. They still weren’t satisfied and the back-and-forth continued.
“New York City needs to lead the world!” the protesters called out.
“New York City is leading the world!” Lander replied.
“You need to put money into smaller, cleaner managers!” they insisted.
“Okay, give me a list”
“It should be your job to look into it!”
It was becoming very clear that this discussion wasn’t going anywhere and after a while, ended anticlimactically with Lander sitting back down to allow the next speaker, Nancy Romer, to take the spotlight and the protesters leaving as soon as their main target no longer had the floor.
Romer started off her speech by saying she would like to see “full decarbonization” of CUNY campuses and, funnily enough, even showed some support for the actions of the two disruptors from earlier, saying she encouraged New Yorkers to “keep pressing” elected officials like Brad Lander. She would later say, “I appreciate the whole dynamic that happened, it was exciting!”
Even when Lander left, it was clear the tension between him and the climate activists still set the tone for the rest of the event. After Romer, the next speaker was Alex Bores, New York State Assembly member for District 73, which includes Hunter College. Bores had to deal with his own skeptic in the crowd, another man seemingly unaffiliated with either of the previous protestors but still challenging the notion that NYC officials were doing enough to shift the city in a cleaner direction. Like Lander, Bores also tried to portray the complexities and bureaucracy of local politics and asserted that he was working on doing everything in his power to make sure New York City was as green as possible. He also made sure to remind the audience that one of the previous speakers who shares his mission, is running for the most powerful seat in the city next year. If this town hall was any indication of the upcoming election, Brad Lander has a tough road ahead of him.