Maurice Brown, Onondaga Legislator candidate, emphasizes community values

Syracuse deserves better, which is why I’m running for Onondaga County Legislature. In my day job, I work as a Success Coach at Onondaga Community College. In my role, I meet with students one on one and help them navigate their experience at OCC. What this job has taught me is that our young people don’t struggle with chemistry or calculus. They instead struggle with childcare, our woefully inadequate bus system and housing insecurity.

In fall 2021, I met with one student who could no longer attend her 8 a.m. class because the bus schedule had changed. She was doing everything right — woke up early, did her homework — but because of our inaction as a community, she was simply denied access to her education. I’ve heard countless stories like hers, and I’m running for county legislature to do something about it.

The Onondaga County Legislature oversees a billion-dollar budget composed of taxes we’ve paid. Currently, our county government operates like a for-profit business instead of a municipality charged with taking care of its citizens. Whether it’s at the Van Duyn center, or by building an aquarium in the middle of a city amidst a lead and housing crisis, time and time again we’ve seen the county putting profit over people. I’m fighting to stop that from happening.

There are many areas where our community is in crisis, and I’d like to address them all. The ones I believe are most crucial are housing, transportation and public health.

With the arrival of Micron, there’s a very clear need for us to build out our public transportation system. If we’re serious about those new jobs going to city residents, we’re going to need a transit system where city residents can get to work, be able to pick up medications and drop their children off at daycare.

Next, we need to take care of our aging housing stock and begin to provide quality affordable housing for Syracuse. This includes repairing, maintaining and ensuring homes remain livable. For far too long, our leaders have lacked the creativity and vision needed to make change in this area. They have settled for proposals from private developers instead of pushing for the housing our community needs. We need to promote more mixed-use developments — including both residential and commercial use — and affordable housing and change the zoning rules to make that more common in our community.

We also need to restore our depleted social services. County staffing within the social services has dropped over the past five years, and residents have suffered. Too many people in our county are a bad break away from being homeless or food insecure. With a mental health pandemic looming, we need to work with community partners, like National Alliance on Mental Illness who work directly with families who are suffering.

I rely on my experiences as a Black alumni of both OCC and Syracuse University. I’ve experienced everything from tokenism and full-on racism to unrealistic expectations and added pressure to deliver. I was raised to know that I’ll need to work twice as hard to get half of what a white man will get. I know that my website needs to look very professional, my hair must look neat and my campaign literature can’t have any mistakes. The bar is set higher for me as a Black man, and I embrace the challenge. Currently, only two of Onondaga County’s 17 legislators are Black, and I want to change that.

Only second to my racial identity is my class identity. I have no shame coming from a household that relied on food stamps. I am glad I grew up this way because it taught me to make the most of what I have, and that lesson has served me well.

I didn’t learn to separate race from class until I went off to college. That was the first time I met people who didn’t look like me, but also had the same struggle. I saw it again during my time in the military and learned that although we have a lot of problems relating to being Black or white, we also have a class issue that is interconnected and just as complicated.

I know there is more that unites us than divides us. Students are a part of this community. You ride unreliable Centro buses, you rent from absentee landlords. The problems you face also confront tens of thousands of other families living alongside you in this city.

I know the potential of SU students to effect positive change in our community. I have been able to work with groups like the Food Recovery Network and NYPIRG to engage our community. I have seen the volunteer work done by members of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Incorporated and other National Pan Hellenic Council organizations firsthand. I know that the views of the college’s leadership aren’t the views of the college community as a whole. In Fall of 2019, I sat in the Barnes center protesting Theta Tau with activists who knew right from wrong and weren’t afraid to speak out when they saw it. What the Onondaga County Legislature is doing to the City of Syracuse is wrong. The county boasts a high credit score and a surplus of funds while the city of Syracuse leads the nation in child poverty.

You can do something about it! Any student living on South campus can get registered and vote in this race. Students spend the majority of their year in this community, and deserve a say in how it’s run. I challenge students and anyone reading this to educate themselves on our county’s government, and make their own assessment on who’s doing enough.

My campaign is not about me, but about us. I invite you all to visit my website, www.electmauricebrown.com to learn more about the coalition we’re building. It will be tough, but together we can build an equitable community we can all be proud of. Let’s get to work!

Maurice Brown, Onondaga Legislator candidate