Plainview Black council retreat looks to ways to combat continuing inequities faced by Long Island's Black residents

Participants in the State of Black Long Island Equity Council retreat Saturday outlined continuing inequities that Black residents face — and discussed ways to combat them.

“There are so many issues that are plaguing us,” the Rev. Sedgwick Easley, pastor of Union Baptist Church in Hempstead, said in an interview after delivering the event’s keynote address. “We are dealing with systemic racism here on Long Island in so many ways, and in so many ways that we don’t recognize.”

Saturday’s retreat, held at the Plainview offices of the Urban League of Long Island, which convened the 2015 meeting that created the council, was the first since the pandemic, said Nicole Jones, the league’s project director.

Easley, who is from rural Virginia, said that when he arrived on Long Island, “I realized that New York wasn't much different than the boondocks.”

Long Island is intensely segregated, with widespread housing discrimination, large inequities in health and education, and many other inequalities, he said.

“I realized that the work here was quite similar to the work that we need to do in the South,” he said.

Easley called on participants to vote for those “who want to be in our corner, those who hear our voices” and “to get out and fight for resources for our community.”

Need to vote in primaries

Deborah Payton-Jones, founder of the Babylon-based nonpartisan Voter Education 365, said residents needed more than just being registered to vote in higher numbers. They also need to vote in primaries, and in school and library board elections, for which turnout is consistently low, she said. Local elected officials have the most effect on people’s day-to-day lives, she said.

“Voting is your opportunity for change,” she said. “If you are in a neighborhood and you see that the parks are not up to par, you need to vote and you need to know who your local politicians are so you can make sure that some of those monies go to what’s important to you.”

“To combat voter apathy we’ve been dealing with for way too long, you have to relate [voting] to an issue that’s important to them,” said Kira Bryant, a Voter Education 365 board member.

Payton-Jones called on local governments to do more to promote voting in primaries, and to better educate residents about early voting and voter registration.

Two key election-law changes in recent years could increase turnout but are unknown to many people, she said: 16-year-olds now can preregister to vote so they can automatically cast ballots after turning 18, and convicted felons can now vote after incarceration, even if still on parole.

Savings accounts for college

The retreat included discussion on a proposal to create college savings accounts for kids in Wyandanch. The Suffolk County community was chosen because of significantly lower median incomes and higher poverty and unemployment rates than Suffolk as a whole, Jones said.

College graduates, she noted, earn on average far more money in their lifetimes than people who don’t graduate college, and they have lower unemployment rates. College funds make attending college less daunting, and reduce potential education debt, she said.

The savings account idea is in its infancy, but potential ideas include having banks, nonprofit organizations, businesses or government provide seed money for the accounts, with extra money put in based upon kids’ school attendance, school initiatives and other factors, Jones said. Retreat participants proposed that funds also be created for vocational school or money to start new businesses.

Brian Leander, a strategist for the equity council, said that when he was growing up in the 1970s in Brooklyn, a local bank helped open bank accounts for kids, matching money put in by them or their parents, up to a certain amount.

Leander said increasing the number of Black college graduates benefited those graduates’ families, as well as the economy and society as a whole.

“If Black people were given their due,” he said, “it would benefit all Long Islanders.”

By David Olson

david.olson@newsday.com@DavidOlson11

David Olson covers health care. He has worked at Newsday since 2015 and previously covered immigration, multicultural issues and religion at The Press-Enterprise in Southern California.