COVER STORY: Speaker Adrienne Adams

COVER STORY ADAMS VOWS HOLISTIC APPROACH TO GOVERNING

BY SHANE MILLER

Before she was elected to represent the people of District 28 in Southeast Queens, Adrienne Adams had never stepped foot in the City Council chambers. Her first time inside was her first day on the job.

“I remember it like it was yesterday, I was looking at a distance at Melissa Mark-Viverito, who was the speaker when I came in,” Adams recalled. “I was looking at her face, and all of a sudden I looked up and got a chill and my spirit just said, ‘you’re home.’”

That was in 2017. Fast-forward to 2022 and Adams doesn’t just serve in the City Council, she leads it as the first African-American woman to serve as Speaker and the first from Queens since Peter Vallone, Sr.

She says the possibility of running for speaker herself came quickly into her first term. MarkViverito’s term was coming to an end and her vote was being courted by colleagues looking to replace her, a process Adams would become alltoo-familiar with last December.

“I was getting to know these candidates and they were all men, about six men running, and I remember thinking, ‘wow, there are no women running for speaker,’” Adams told This Is Queensborough during a recent interview at the Joseph P. Addabbo Family Health Center in Jamaica. “What’s wrong with this picture?”

At the time, there were only 11 women serving in the City Council. Today, 31 of the 51 members are women. That is more then double the number of women that served in the City Council before the November election, and gives women the majority for the first time in the council’s history.

Adams believes women govern differently than men, and says under her leadership the City Council will have a more holistic approach to serving the people of the five boroughs.

“There is a majority of women in New York City, and we represent that,” Adams said. “We are going to bring a prioritization of family, education, health care, and senior care.”

Adams grew up in Hollis and attended Bayside High School with, of all people, Mayor Eric Adams. But a life of community service wasn’t always on her mind. Instead, she found herself in the world of corporate America, but after a brief stint with Goldman Sachs decided she needed a change.

“I told my husband, ‘I’m done with corporate America,’” she said. “My husband said ‘just spread your wings.’”

Adams is still active in Alpha Kappa Alpha, the same sorority that counts Vice President Kamala Harris among its members. Their mission statement stresses community service, and one of her sorority sisters, who happened to be chair of Community Board 12, invited her to a meeting.

“I said, ‘community board, what’s that?’” Adams recalled. “So I went to a community board meeting and I was hooked. Absolutely hooked.”

She was quickly appointed chair of the Education Committee and saw firsthand the inequity in three different school districts. Rather than take a passive role on the board, she became a vocal advocate for improving the quality of education in Southeast Queens.

“That’s where everything really took off for me,” Adams said. “The spark was lit and the fire just rose up in me. I said ‘we have to do something.’ I had to be a voice.”

Her life in public service would continue to expand. Adams was appointed to the Jamaica Downtown Revitalization Initiative by thengovernor Andrew Cuomo, and she is former co-chair of the Jamaica NOW Leadership Council, a diverse group of stakeholders who provide oversight of the revitalization and economic development of the downtown Jamaica core.

“That was about reviving arts and culture and small businesses that had been ignored for a long time, as well as reinforcing our BID’s,” Adams said of her time with Jamaica NOW. “We got a lot of that done.

“There’s still a lot to do,” she added. “The pandemic stifled a lot of the businesses and the work that we started.”

Adams said the experience opened her eyes to the inequities in the city, especially in the outer boroughs. She said growing up in the 70’s, Jamaica Avenue was a thriving retail strip where people from across the borough and city came to shop. By the time she was appointed by Cuomo, that had all disappeared.

“We had to come back in 2000 and try to make that beautiful thing that should have never left us to begin with,” Adams said. “Again, it’s the inequity across the city, particularly in the outer boroughs that have been forgotten. I say this about a lot of things, but it should not have taken that long to put eyes on Downtown Jamaica.”

Adams says she sees the same thing happening today, especially in the wake of the pandemic. She says people wonder why so many small businesses are still shuttered, when the simple answer is that they have been ignored and overlooked. She points to the Paycheck Protection Program that helped businesses keep their workforce employed during the pandemic as an example.

“It was the larger businesses who we knew didn’t need the millions who ended up getting the millions,” Adams said. “Some of them were even guilty enough to give it back. We have little mom-and-pop stores with the gate down that could have used a fraction of that to remain in business.”

Adams said the city still needs the federal government to do their part to help the city recover from the pandemic, but said under her leadership the city will be proactive about addressing the concerns of small business owners.

“We need more help, but this time we need to assess what it is that small businesses need to survive and thrive,” she said. “We need a better look at what’s going on with our small businesses. We need to cut through the bureaucracy and red tape.”

Adams spoke with TIQ on the same day President Joe Biden visited Queens. She was invited to take part in a photo-op with the president and other elected officials, but she said her busy

Councilwoman Adrienne Adams on the floor of the City Council on the day she was elected speaker. (Photo: City Council)