By Niko Balkaran
Justin Sanchez is a lifelong Bronxite and the grandson of Dominican and Puerto Rican immigrants. Sanchez has served as the Director of External Affairs at the Office of the Bronx Borough President under Ruben Diaz Jr. and then as Chief of Staff to the then New York State Assembly Member Nathalia Fernandez. He is currently the Chief of Staff of New York State Senate Member Nathalia Fernandez.
Why are you running for the City Council 17 seat?
I’m running on four simple words, clean the damn streets and the way I plan on doing that is making city services actually work for us. Let’s start with some trash cans on our street corners, tackling the opioid crisis so that we can get people that are dealing with substance use disorder off of our streets and then into the long-term holistic care they need so that they can be on a pathway towards recovery and three improve our education system so that we can get kids off the streets back into the classrooms while also doing things to help our parents, grandparents and caretakers like free, universal afterschool programs and free weekend programs.
Why should Bronxites vote for you?
Being born and raised in the Bronx, what I am offering is being able to combine life experiences, being those kids waking up, we’re taking the subway every day to school. Combined with my educational background and my work experiences, to truly be able to deliver for our communities on day one. Growing up experiencing homelessness, experiencing poverty firsthand, my mom was on food stamps. My mom had me when she was 18. Growing up in a household struggling to get by puts you in a mindset to really understand what a lot of our community is going through. The way that I approach this campaign and the way that I approach governance in general is figuring out ways to make kids who grew up like me, families like mine, their lives a little bit better every single day. That’s what we plan to do at the city council.
What are the most important issues in your district?
I have the most important issue in our district are clean streets. We need to make sure that we’re actually providing city services for districts and so first and foremost is making city services actually work for us in ways that actually support our communities. Two, the opiate crisis, making sure that we’re getting people that are dealing with substance use disorder in a pathway towards recovery because our communities deserve better. And three, improving our education system to be able to break the cycles. The systemic problems that have been put in front of us and being able to actually overcome them and really launch ourselves in a pathway to a middle class and to breaking the systems that have been put in place that don’t allow us to thrive.