Jabari Brisport
Senator Jabari Brisport, 33, represents New York’s 25th State Senate district which includes Fort Greene, Boerum Hill, Red Hook, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Sunset Park, Gowanus, and Park Slope. He is a third-generation Caribbean-American resident of Brooklyn who was born in Bed-Stuy and raised in Prospect Heights. He is the first openly gay person of color elected to the New York State Legislature.
Senator Brisport became an activist more than a decade ago when he began organizing efforts in support of a bill to legalize same-sex marriage in New York. The bill was defeated in 2009 but he continued organizing around the issue until same-sex marriage was ultimately legalized in NY two years later. He continued his activism as part of the early Black Lives Matter movement and began organizing rallies and protests, as well as training protesters on what to do if stopped or harassed by the police.
At the time of his election, Senator Brisport was a math teacher at a middle school in Crown Heights and an active member of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) union. As a public-school teacher, he saw firsthand how the chronic underfunding of our schools and massive increases in policing have created glaring injustices for New York’s students, and how those injustices are compounded by lack of access to basic needs like housing and healthcare.
These experiences shaped his determination to fight for a just state budget that provides funding for the infrastructure and services New Yorkers need to survive and thrive, especially in times of crisis. Senator Brisport is a vocal advocate of raising taxes on the rich, and policies that place the needs of working-class people above corporate profits, including a Green New Deal, the New York Health Act, universal access to housing, and the cancelation of rent and mortgage arrears accumulated during the COVID-19 pandemic.
2020 State Senate race
In 2019, Brisport announced a run for the New York State Senate 25th District, being vacated by Democrat Velmanette Montgomery. On September 29, 2019, Brisport’s run for State Senate was officially endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America. His campaign did not accept any donations from the real estate industry or any for-profit corporations. Instead, it received donations from over 7,000 individuals, breaking the record for most donors to a New York State level campaign. According to a statement from the campaign, they also had the support of over 1,000 volunteers. In addition to the DSA, his campaign was endorsed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, Cynthia Nixon, New York Communities for Change, and the Working Families Party, among other grassroots organizations.
On election night of the Democratic primary on June 23, 2020, Brisport led the race with 52.25% of the vote against sitting Assemblywoman Tremaine Wright and former Montgomery staffer Jason Salmon. However, absentee ballots were more significant than usual due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and on election night there were still 26,000 absentee ballots to be counted. Brisport declared victory on July 23, once the absentee ballots had been counted and his lead over Wright had been extended to 10,000 votes. Brisport won in the November general election.
