CBID Response to County Committee Meeting held on 9.23.26
Calling yesterday’s County Committee Organizing meeting a kangaroo court would be an insult to kangaroos. This was more like a circus if you trapped everyone in and let the lions loose while Anthony Beckford told everyone there were no lions eating people. What we saw defied logic, common sense, parliamentary procedure, party rules, election law, and the fundamental pro- small-d-democratic values that the Democratic Party holds dear.
The meeting was “supposed” to start at 10am, which we knew wasn’t going to be the actual start time. We didn’t anticipate that the meeting wouldn’t actually start until 3:30 pm. Between 10am and 3:30pm, you may ask yourself, “what did 300 people who took a day off work do for 6 hours”, and the answer is, sadly, sit around doing nothing. Imagine having 300 people who are dedicated enough to the Democratic Party to be in the same place and not have any discussions about how we can organize to support Democrats in South Brooklyn in seats we can flip.
Imagine having the organizing power of over a dozen District Leaders and Assemblymembers from around Brooklyn, leaders from political clubs, and spending the whole day not organizing or engaging with each other. That’s what the current leadership did - they sat on stage while Rodneyse Bichotte’s placard was on the table and she hid behind stage and never showed her face - but voted with her proxies.
A brief rundown of some of the events that took place:
People were shuffled around sign in tables with no clear order or signage (there were signs that were on the floor, so no one could see them) for the first hour and a half just to get their registration badges
The electronic voting devices (clickers) had an issue (we think they weren’t charged ahead of time) so there was further delay in those being distributed
Anyone who had proxies to submit were told to keep waiting
People who were not carrying proxies were brought into the auditorium and then told to wait - this lasted at least 2 hours
When asked again when we could submit proxies, we were told they were “no longer accepting new proxies.” When pressed for why, we were told the meeting had been called to order.
Anthony Beckford, the 2nd vice chair, called the meeting to order, which caused a few issues:
First, he did not have the authority to do so, the first chair Alan Rockoff only has the power to call the meeting to order
Second, not everyone had their clickers, so he “decided” to call the meeting without everyone having the ability to vote
Third, there was no notice about submitting proxies, which would have meant dozens and dozens of proxies that were collected throughout Brooklyn would be invalidated
Alan Rockoff took the proxies held by several District Leaders and said he would manually scan and enter them into the system
Seemingly basic questions were disregarded and treated with disrespect and never answered:
How can we ensure all of our proxies are submitted? Alan told us that we could review the book of logged proxies during the meeting, once voting had already started
When voting for slates of vacancy appointments, we never saw how many or which EDs were represented by each or any person. This was never addressed and straight up refused to be acknowledged
When Beckford introduced the rules reforms - the same ones that were deemed unlawful in court last week and are in the appellate court - it was raised that no one received notice before the meeting about these rules being voted on. They said they had proof they were mailed, however no proof was shown and when asked to the crowd who had received the notice only 1 person raised their hand and said they had received it that morning.
The proposed rules reform and slate from County also did not include a Chairperson, and had Beckford as the 1st VP, which he is also not eligible for. Beckford pushed the vote forward anyway.
Beckford continuously ignored points of information and points of clarification and ignored all points about unlawful and illegal acts he was approving and pushing forward. He threatened to throw out multiple people multiple times, even calling in the NYPD at one point. CUNY security, to their credit, said they don’t throw people out of an event just for yelling.
There was no open forum and no updates from committees. Again, NO talk of organizing the Party to win seats in Brooklyn.
Even if you want to assume the best of intentions - which we do not - and say that the delays and issues that came up were technical issues and logistical issues, then even at the most basic level of competency we need to ask: are these the people we want running our Democratic Party? Are these the leaders we believe can organize around Brooklyn and actually help Democrats win? Or are they only in this for themselves?
At its worst, the current leadership showed us exactly who we knew they were, and acted blatantly in public and on the record.
They don’t care about Brooklyn Democrats, they care about themselves. They don’t care about disenfranchised voters, they only want their people to have input and power into the Party. They don’t care about voters, they care about their money. They are willing to act unlawfully and continue to argue in court, wasting more of OUR time and money, wasting more of the Party’s credibility and power. They are willing to say the quiet part out loud and ignore common decency to preserve their own power.
We would be remiss to not acknowledge several Diana Gonzalez, Ilyssa Meyer, Joanne Simon, Akel Williams, Shaquana Boykin for speaking (and shouting when being blatantly ignored) truth and law to “power”, to all the Brooklyn Can’t Wait organizers for speaking up and pointing the exact laws Beckford was ignoring.
CBID has been fighting corruption in Party politics since 1968. It’s in our logo, it’s in our DNA. We’ve been fighting for reform politics since before Vito Lopez, Frank Seddio, and Rodneyse Bichotte. We will not stop now. We understand the importance of this moment, both to expose the current leadership’s inept corruption (which they did a great job of exposing themselves), and to organize real Democrats in real elections.
You can join us at our next meeting to talk through our next steps and how we are going to work with Democratic candidates in Brooklyn to flip seats.
Next Meeting
Tuesday, September 29th at 7pm
Please note the date and time change*
This meeting will be held in person at 390 Social (390 5th Avenue)
County Committee Organizing Meeting recap and next steps
Endorsement for Claire Valdez in NY-7
Endorsement for Michael DeCillis in NY-11
Endorsement for Chris McCreight in AD-46 (added to agenda)
Nominations and election of officers and Executive Committee for 2026-2027
If you would like to become an executive committee member, email ashercbid@gmail.com for more information and nominations can be taken from the floor
Huge huge thanks to everyone who helped make the 58th Annual CBID Gala such a success, and all our honorees for the amazing work they have done, continue to do, and inspired us with their speeches. And special shoutout to AG Letitia James for coming to speak with us as well.
Appreciation to our honorees:
District Attorney Eric Gonzalez
Bryony Romer
Sharon Harkey
ALE (Association for Legislative Employees)
Ruth's Refuge
Nydia Velazquez
Jerry Nadler
Photos by: Adam Bruynesteyn
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