Editor’s note: The following is a brief series is to introduce readers to the new Democratic District leaders recently elected to the unpaid party position.
Of Brooklyn’s incoming Democratic district leaders, 30-year-old Shaquana Boykin (D-Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, Prospect Heights, Crown Heights) is unique in her lifelong commitment to grassroots activism.
Born in Crown Heights, she began her organizing career with ACORN at the age of 16. Boykin later graduated from Kingsborough and City Tech, served with Americorps, and has called NYCHA’s Walt Whitman Houses home since 2009.
Boykin has made healthy eating a top priority of her organizing, recalling her work to help educate Myrtle Avenue residents about the benefits of shopping at a farmers’ market. “It was so far up the block towards the house, people didn’t really notice it,” she said. “A volunteer and I would take people to up the block to the farmers market and we would actually shop. Surprisingly, a lot of people did not know how to shop in a farmer’s market. They shopped like it was a supermarket.”
Later, Boykin worked as an engagement coordinator for the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, where she helped promote security for the residents of the Ingersoll Houses. “It was the most amazing experience to see residents, police officers, agencies that can provide community alternatives,” she beamed.
“At that time, I was doing a lot of surveying and realized that the people in Ingersoll said that they felt safe, but they did not feel connected to resources, like heat and hot water.
Boykin shared her findings with the mayor’s office. “They were like, `Great, but we’re not working on that right now,’.” Disappointed in this response, she quit the position, expressing that such sentiments are not uncommon among elected officials.
“I’ll see a lot of politicians come to me, and you don’t see them walking in the street. You don’t see them really talk to people unless it’s a photo opportunity,” she said.
After looking for a chance to be a different kind of elected official, Boykin learned of the district leader position, feeling its unpaid nature would better equip her to empathize with the needs of her district’s residents. “A lot of times, they think that elected officials are paid, and we have to pay elected officials,” she said.
“Paid or not, you have to serve the people, you have to see the human, you have to have compassion, and it’s okay not to know everything. Listen and learn.”
Boykin noted that she has concerns about her new role, particularly regarding the pandemic’s hampering of convening people and collecting information from as large a sample size as possible, but expressed pride in her unique service background.
Regardless, she has cited her integrity as a top-selling point of her candidacy. “I’m hoping people will see an American woman from Brooklyn in politics that they would be inclined to do themselves. I don’t want to have this role longer than two years,” said Boykin.
“I would like to make sure that I’ve connected to other people who like to be in the community, who feel that we need a transparent Democratic [political] club, that we need to hold people accountable. If I can affect that into more people, we’ll have so many people who are thinking of and wanting to participate in the right way, and get rid of politicians who lead selfishly.”
