Earlier this month, Frances Villar delivered a speech downtown about ending homelessness in the city and curbing home foreclosures when she suddenly turned her head and pointed towards Battery Park City in the distance.
“You see those condos and apartments over there,” Villar said. “They were built for rich people by greedy capitalist developers, and most of them are sitting half empty right now while thousands upon thousands of New Yorkers have nowhere to sleep.”
Villar, 26, the mayoral candidate running on the Socialism and Liberation party line, says she is one of the many New Yorkers that Michael Bloomberg ignores.
“The mayor only has a record of paying people to leave New York City when they lose their jobs and homes because they become too burdensome for him,” she said. “In the richest city in the world, this is not only unacceptable but criminal.”
At a staged press event in front of the Campaign Finance Board in Lower Manhattan earlier in the month, Villar loudly protested the requirement that a candidate must raise at least $50,000 in order to participate in the mayoral debates—the second of which is scheduled for Tuesday night. She wants the law banned and feels it is a discriminatory practice that rewards candidates that are beholden to banks and real estate developers.
“This law is racist, taking us back to the days when influence was only limited to property-owning white men,” Villar said, “but it is also classist, shutting out people who cannot self-finance or rely on corporate interests.”
Villar’s campaign has currently raised $9,000, mainly through small donors whom she says cannot give much, but would like to have a voice in the political process
“Working people don’t have $50,000 to spend just to appear at one debate,” Villar said. “It’s an undemocratic practice that drives away real middle-class New Yorkers who instead have to spend money on rent and food for their children.”
In addition to collecting 14,000 signatures, twice the 7,500 required to appear on the ballot, Villar has held rallies in every single borough and says she will hold more to share her story to voters disenchanted with Bloomberg and unimpressed with Thompson. She plans to protest her exclusion at the upcoming mayoral forum.
“Bloomberg wants to send people away and wipe their hands clean of them,” she said. “Meanwhile, the supposedly nonpartisan election board wants to shut me out of the debate although I should have a microphone to represent my supporters.”
In speaking about issues like chronic homelessness to declining incomes, Villar, a native of the Dominican Republican and a Bronx resident, says that the two major party candidates are oblivious of the perils of the working class. A single mother of two, Villar is also a tenant organizer and CUNY student. She has campaigned at Riker’s Island to commemorate the 1971 Attica prison uprising and wants to decriminalize drugs and stop the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk policies.
Villar believes that the city protects those that have the most influence at the detriment of hardworking people. Her disdain for both Thompson and Bloomberg is not hidden or nuanced.
“We have a billionaire corporate candidate who has the nerve to touch people’s shoulders and say he knows what we’re going through,” she said, “along with a wealthy bank executive who is the same corporate-controlled candidate that for eight years as comptroller refused to stand up for people.”
While her early morning press conference in front of the Board of Elections had only a few supporters in tow, she said that she is strongly supported in the neighborhoods that Bloomberg has “forgotten”, namely in areas where high unemployment and a lack of educational resources has plagued citizens.
“Why doesn’t he donate 25 percent of his wealth to the city and public sectors?” Villar asked. “Then, he can really show us how he feels about the people of this city.”
FrancesVillar
