CityHallNews.com

When young people commit crimes, Council Member Sara Gonzalez (D-Brooklyn) calls it “deviating from their character.”

She is a woman of faith – she calls herself blessed to be representing the area of Brooklyn she grew up in – and one of her core convictions is that the city has an obligation to respect children, no matter what they have done, by providing them with all the tools they need to return to society and avoid getting back into trouble.

Gonzalez said the fledgling Juvenile Justice Committee (until this year a subcommittee of Public Safety) is a particularly good fit for her because “most of my life has been working with young people.”

Over three decades as a civic activist, she worked with Southwest Brooklyn’s Youth Improvement Program, and as the executive director of the Hispanic Young People’s alternative, she explained.

The commitment started early. As a student, she commuted 25 minutes from Sunset Park to Fort Hamilton High School, turning her into a lead advocate for creating more local high schools. She stayed with the issue, and this past April, money was granted for the construction of Sunset Park High School, to be on 35th Street between Third and Fourth Avenues.

Ribbon cutting is the anomaly in Gonzalez’s routine, which is filled by tasks which might be sobering to many.

No stranger to hardship, she saw many friends die of AIDS, taking pride and motivation in ensuring they had the highest possible quality of life through every stage of the sickness. She spent much of the 1980s working to dispel misinformation and prejudice associated with the disease in the poorer parts of Brooklyn.

She brings that unshakable disposition – imported from her native Puerto Rico – to senior centers, where she dances with the seniors, and to the Horizon Juvenile Center in the South Bronx, where she recently spent the afternoon meeting with groups of young women.

She left the locked 124-bed facility optimistic. In fact, she says, she enjoyed it, and her discussions with the girls convinced her that the detention center is merely a “pit stop” for them.

Making sure that children released from juvenile detention do not end up back in detention or in jail has been a top priority for Gonzalez since becoming chair in January. Her committee held a hearing in April to gather testimony from the State Office of Children and Family Services, the City Department of Juvenile Justice and several juvenile advocacy groups, in an effort to determine how effective the resources are for discharged juveniles. The committee’s efforts proved successful when $500,000 was earmarked for discharge planning services in the recently passed budget.

Gonzalez said she was “not able to express” her satisfaction that the Council – particularly Speaker Christine Quinn – was listening to and agreeing with one of its newest committees.

Four years after Gonzalez won her seat representing the 38th Council District, it still has not completely sunk in. “Sometimes I need to sit down and think it through,” she says. Representing the neighborhood where she grew up – having married her high school sweetheart, raised a son and daughter (and now a granddaughter) – is exactly the job her life had prepared her for, she said. She did not wake up one morning and decide she wanted to be in the Council, but her life pushed her there, and her position as chairperson of Brooklyn’s Community Board 7 put her in the right place at the right time for her 2002 special election.

When she goes to the store now, it doesn’t matter if she’s wearing sunglasses – her constituents recognize her and call to her from across the street. Many are friends made over the years. Because she arrived in a special election, she is eligible to run for reelection again in 2009, and has not considered what may come after a job she calls “full time and a half.” But she is adamant about running again.