Your guide to NYC's public proceedings.
PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Christina Chaise, Advocacy Coordinator at TakeRoot Justice
4:12:50
ยท
162 sec
Christina Chaise, a lifelong NYC resident and NYCHA tenant, testifies in support of abolishing the NYPD's gang database. She shares personal experiences of living under surveillance in public housing and expresses fear for her young son's future. Chaise argues that the database disproportionately harms Black and Latino youth and perpetuates systemic injustice.
- Chaise emphasizes how the gang database leads to harsher sentences and higher bail bonds, making it difficult for families to navigate the legal system
- She describes the database as a "setup" that criminalizes innocent behavior and steals childhoods from young people of color
- Chaise urges council members to listen to community testimonies and take action to abolish the gang database
Christina Chaise
4:12:50
Do I turn it on or no?
4:12:51
Oh, good afternoon Chair Salaam.
4:12:54
I'm Christina Chase, I'm a long term resident of New York City, excuse me, a lifelong.
4:12:59
And I'm also an advocacy coordinator at Take Root Justice along with Pilar.
4:13:03
I'm here today to center the concerns and demands established by one of our coalition partners, the Gangs Coalition, and to speak on and advocate for NYCHA families disproportionately harmed by these practices and policies, and to demand for the abolition of the gangs database.
4:13:17
I've lived in public housing since I was six.
4:13:20
Now I'm raising my son in the community I grew up in, Ravenswood Houses, and he's two.
4:13:24
I was taught and I teach my son to say hello to all of his neighbors.
4:13:28
It scares me to think that my son Mateo can end up on a list that criminalizes him simply for saying good morning to his elders.
4:13:35
I'm sorry.
4:13:36
It infuriates me that we have to live a different life because of being public housing residents.
4:13:41
A life of hyper surveillance and hyper policing.
4:13:44
I'm sorry.
4:13:44
Get sensitive when I talk about my son.
4:13:47
It is part of our everyday lives as NYCHA residents to feel like we don't belong, to feel like a criminal just for being, to feel like a second class citizen, and the gang's database is a living document that substantiates this.
4:14:00
As we know, being put on the gang's database leads to harsher sentences and higher bail bonds that extinguish possibilities of a second chance, innocent or not.
4:14:08
It is a setup.
4:14:09
Our children are placed on this list, hyper surveilled, then roped further into a carceral system depending on who they know and how they represent themselves.
4:14:17
It is a setup.
4:14:18
We usually can't pay for the bonds and affirmatively navigate the legal system.
4:14:23
It is a setup.
4:14:25
And then we lose our child.
4:14:26
We lose our child to a system that never saw them as innocent, that never saw them as child.
4:14:31
It is a setup.
4:14:32
I can only share with you my own experience and my own gendered light skinned body.
4:14:36
Meaning I cannot convey to you the experience of young black and brown boys and men that have their childhood stolen, their innocence erased, and their spirits murdered the way they are telling you here today.
4:14:47
But I will still speak with my own experience of having a home raided by police for association with someone they're looking for.
4:14:53
My own experience as a young person that has been stopped and frisked more than once, as a NYCHA resident who fears and mistrusts the police because of the violence I've endured and witnessed, and as a mom who weeps for every mother who lost her son, her baby, to this carceral system.
4:15:07
This database does not lead to justice.
4:15:09
It leads to death metaphorically and literally.
4:15:12
I implore you to listen and respond to the testimonies you hear today from the people of New York.
4:15:17
Our children, our brothers, our men, our fathers, our families need you to step up.
4:15:21
Council members, abolish the gang's database now.
4:15:24
Thank you.
Yusef Salaam
4:15:29
Thank you.
4:15:29
I appreciate your testimony.
Christina Chaise
4:15:31
Thank you.