My conversation with Maurice (Mo) Brown

In addition to the progressive wins in NYC congressional primaries last month that you’ve probably heard about, there were a number of similar victories in state legislative races. Most of these were downstate too, but one was in Buffalo (Adam Bojak in the 149th Assembly District) and one was here in Syracuse (Maurice (Mo) Brown in the 129th). Mo unseated Democratic incumbent Bill Magnarelli, who has held the seat since 1999. The New York Times just ran a piece on the two upstate races, but outside of Central and Western New York, I’m not sure people realize how big a deal they are.

I’ve known Mo since 2017, first as a local organizer here in Syracuse, then as my student, then as a neighbor and friend. For the past 6 months, he’s been my representative in the Onondaga County Legislature. I asked some comrades to scare up some photos and got some good ones. Here’s Mo at a March 2019 Fair Elections rally in Syracuse:

Here he is on the mic at a Defend Democracy rally in January 2024:

This one is an early Trump 2.0 demonstration at the Hanley Federal Building in Syracuse:

And here we are at a #NoKings rally earlier this year:

On July 2, I had a chance to sit down with Mo and chat about the recent election and progressive organizing in Syracuse. What follows is a lightly edited transcript. Hit me up if you like it, as I’m thinking of doing more of these.

[Tom Keck] 14:30:18
Hey Mo, how are you?

[Maurice Brown, He/him] 14:30:32
I'm doing good!

You timed this perfectly. We're leaving at 4 o'clock. I'm going on vacation.

[Tom Keck] 14:30:42
Amazing. And congratulations.

[Maurice Brown, He/him] 14:30:47
Thank you. I appreciate that.

[Tom Keck] 14:30:52
That's good. Good time for vacation. I hope somewhere cooler, maybe.

[Maurice Brown, He/him] 14:30:57
We're going to the Thousand Islands region. And I finally get to jet ski.

[Tom Keck] 14:31:07
Nice. I like it.

[Maurice Brown, He/him] 14:31:09
Honestly, I'm looking forward to just turning my phone off. Like, my phone has been non-stop since Tuesday. Honestly, it's been non-stop since last Tuesday, but last Tuesday was more annoying, because everybody was asking for an update. [Note: On election night, Mo had an 82-vote lead, but the race wasn’t called until the following Tuesday.]

[Tom Keck] 14:34:12
I think I was one of them lol. Sorry about that.

Okay, so here we go. I wanna start by going back to November 2016. Do you remember where you were on election night?

[Maurice Brown, He/him] 14:34:24
Vividly, like it was yesterday. I was in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

I was stationed with a military police unit based out of West Virginia. And a lot of the soldiers that served with me, they didn't look like me, but they knew poverty. I'm from Brooklyn in the nineties poverty. They knew Wheeling, West Virginia poverty. They knew Somerset County, Pennsylvania.

And it was such a disconnect. On election day, I was, like, crying in my room, and it was like a Trump rally outside. It was like a full-on rally, flags, I think someone let off a firework and got written up for it, like, I don't know where they get a firework from, but it was like a real party.

[Tom Keck] 14:35:02
Wow.

[Maurice Brown, He/him] 14:35:10
And yeah, I just felt like there's no way they think this is gonna work out for them. But they really did, they bought it, they bought it. And … 10 years later, I think some of them have come around, but just the fact that they were able to buy it to begin with was so worrying to me.

[Tom Keck] 14:35:17
Yeah. Okay.

[Maurice Brown, He/him] 14:35:29
And honestly, that was, like, the catalyst of why I got into politics as much as I'm in now.

[Tom Keck] 14:35:34
Tell me a little bit more about that. After election night, what happened from there?

[Maurice Brown, He/him] 14:35:39
So when I first got to the unit in May, I was introduced to the whole unit. I was a replacement, so I was new to the unit, and they introduced me as “the Bernie Sanders delegate from New York.”

So I don't know if the “New York” or the “Bernie Sanders delegate” was more polarizing. But when they did that, I pretty much became like the political commentator of the unit. So whenever anything political happened, people would come to me. Whenever people saw me, they wanted to talk about politics and would have conversations about socialism. We would have conversations about you know, snow plows, and if they're needed, we would have conversations about the fire department, and if they're needed, and in having those conversations we were close. We shared values. I can say with good confidence that the things they valued and the things I value are similar. The way they get to work, or the way they think about going to work is the way I grew up thinking about going to work.

We were similar in values, we just disagreed on how we got here, and whose fault it was.

And they really bought that, you know, it's the Mexicans, it's the person on food stamps, it's, you know, the other. And I didn't. I thought that six dudes or like a handful of people have as much money as pretty much every single person in my community.

And yeah, we really disagree, but we continue to have those conversations.

I told myself when I got back, I wanted to get involved in some way to bridge that gap, because I really felt like the political separation was education. I really felt like if more people knew about how we got here, and they knew about, you know, why the income inequality existed, they would see my perspective more.

And yeah, one thing led to another.

[Tom Keck] 14:37:45
And then you got back, you were here in Syracuse? And then what kind of organizing were you involved in then?

[Maurice Brown, He/him] 14:37:53
So the CNY Solidarity Coalition organized around the travel ban in 2017. And I thought that was a good thing, so I got involved. I got to know a lot of people. But at one point, CNY Solidarity Coalition made an active choice to not get into elections. And I disagreed with that decision. I understood it, but I disagreed with it. And a couple of us, myself, Joe Driscoll, Zach Zeliff, Christine Wood, we kind of splintered and made our own thing, Uplift Syracuse.

Uplift Syracuse pretty much shared the same values as CNY Solidarity Coalition, but we were intentionally political, just filling the gap that the Solidarity Coalition created.

And by doing that we got really involved in local politics. We started with county legislature races in 2017. Then we, you know, worked on Rachel May's campaign in 2018. Shadia Tadros, Dana Balter's primary.

And then once Rachel won her race, we saw change at the state level that I'd never seen before. And it really made me believe like, wow, electoral politics is a way you can make change in your community.

And once we had proof of concept, we saw that this worked, we were like, all right, this is a good strategy to make this place better.

[Tom Keck] 14:39:42
And what was the reaction from the local Democratic Party like?

[Maurice Brown, He/him] 14:39:46
At first, inviting. At first, they were happy that there were young people who, you know, wanted to help Democrats.

They weren't as excited when we started doing the primaries. They didn't like the whole values thing. It wasn't really their thing. They wanted us to just kind of exist and support their thing. They didn't really want us for our ideas.

[Tom Keck] 14:40:03
Yeah.

[Maurice Brown, He/him] 14:40:09
But healthy conversation for the most part. Some of it got nasty, but for the most part, just an ideological disagreement on how bad things are right now.

And I really think that still persists where there are some within us that are like, you know, things aren't that bad. We're complaining too much. And then there are some within our coalition that are homeless. There are people that I organize with that are unhoused.

We organize in the same space and we, you know, work together, but there's a real disconnect on how we got here, and what level of urgency this moment needs. And that's been my head butting with the Onondaga County Democratic Committee and certain other Democratic committees around the State. Tompkins Committee was better, Cortland was okay, Rensselaer not as much, Erie County not as much.

The Democratic Party fundamentally is very: We're doing a good job, pat us on the back for doing a good job, and people like me saying, you may be doing a good job, but you can do a lot better.

[Tom Keck] 14:41:33
Did you know from the beginning that you were going to run for office yourself?

[Maurice Brown, He/him] 14:41:38
No, I wanted to stay behind the scenes. So when I went to school, I ended up minoring in political science, but I studied communication, like nonverbal communication. I always found that to be interesting.

And I grew up playing sports, I grew up in the sports world. I wanted one of those jobs, I wanted to be, like, those people you just see yelling at each other, like, LeBron is the best, Jordan is the best! I was like, they're getting paid for that?

[Tom Keck] 14:42:09
Yeah. Like Michael Wilbon?

[Maurice Brown, He/him] 14:42:10
Wilbon, Smith, Kornheiser, like that just seemed like a good job. I was a standup comedian for a spell.

But when Bernie ran, I was a delegate to his campaign, and the things that got me to be a Bernie delegate was that I was a veteran, I was involved locally. I had, you know, life experience that got me there and those things also make me an attractive candidate. I eventually worked for the Working Families Party in 2019. I was on staff and a part of my job was to recruit and train candidates.

And in recruiting and training candidates, especially in Central New York, it's tough. It's tough. A lot of our most competent people do not want to get involved in electoral politics, and then we have good people that get involved, but they deal with our local electoral system, which pushes you out by design.

It's purposely gate-kept, and that gate is locked shut, and if you don't pay your dues, if you don't kiss the ring, if you don't, you know, bend the knee, you will never get in through that gate, and they got tired of beating on the gate, and they… some left.

Like, they flat out left Syracuse. Others just don't want to get involved in politics, but you know, the only way you can get good cause eviction is through the Syracuse Common Council. The only way you can get SHA [Syracuse Housing Authority] funded is through having a good Congress member. So, the need didn't leave, and the lack of candidates got me realizing, okay, if I don't run, … when I was gonna run for county legislature, I thought the alternative was a terrible choice. I think recent events have confirmed that. I ran against Tim Rudd, and I knew at the time, what we all know now, is that he would not have been a good county legislator.

And I felt that way with my recent race as well, where we've had the same assembly member for a long time, and we've gotten a lot of the same results, and those results are not helping the community that I live in. There's a lot of people that still feel disenfranchised, that still feel marginalized in this community, and we need to try and switch things up. So, I did look for… I looked for several candidates. I spoke to several people for this year's race.

They turned me down, and then I was like, God damn it. It's gonna have to be me, isn't it?

[Tom Keck] 14:44:52
That's always the way. So, you mentioned CNY Solidarity Coalition and Uplift Syracuse. You mentioned Working Families Party a little bit. I know you're also involved with Syracuse DSA. And you mentioned a little bit from early 2017, the sort of tensions within the local activist community about electoral politics versus not. What's your take on that now? Especially in Central New York, what’s your take on that landscape at the moment?

[Maurice Brown, He/him] 14:45:33
Oh, yeah, it's become better. I think we are realizing what each other does better. I think in 2016, Trump just got a lot of us in, especially 2017. There was a lot of people that were new to local organizing, and everybody wanted to do it their way. And honestly, I guess myself included. I wanted to do electoral politics. And it took a minute for us to catch our stride and figure out, okay, WFP wants to do local candidates and CNY Solidarity wants to train organizers on issues. SIRDN wants to do rapid response. And the Workers Center has their thing. So it's taken a minute to figure it out, but I do think we have our stride as the left.

I think my campaign is a good embodiment of it, where we had older folks with CNY Solidarity who aren't necessarily going to knock doors like my DSA friends, but they were able to write postcards. So they were able to help do something really useful in their own lane, whereas the DSA folks who have the ability to knock doors and push bodies in their own lane. We had Citizen Action running phone banks for our campaign, because that's something they can do. So, I think figuring out how the different groups are able to help campaigns is helpful, but then help the community with the different teach-ins and the different things that go on. I think no one can do everything.

I pride myself not on being the smartest person in the room, but on having the ability to find the smartest person in the room, especially around specific issues. And there are people doing amazing work around the environment, like AGREE, and I don't know what they know, but I can talk to them and have an open conversation, and they can talk to me. And I like that, because that's how we grow as an organized left.

But I think 2017 was a rocky start. I think Trump just, you know, shook everything to a chaotic state, and we really didn't know how to stand up to him, and now I think we're getting better, but also they're getting better too, so we're in a better place, but we're up against a much more formidable foe in 2026, so we have work to do.

[Tom Keck] 14:47:54
Yeah, for sure. In your recent race, most of the local unions, maybe all the local unions, endorsed Magnarelli. I assume they're going to come around and start supporting you now. I don't want to make you say anything mean about them, but like why is that? And what's your take on that?

[Maurice Brown, He/him] 14:48:15
I am disappointed I didn't get interviews from a lot of the unions I would've liked to have gotten interviews from. I've made it known with their leadership that I felt slighted. A part of the run for me was to have the conversation.

I think as a Democratic Party, we need to have a conversation. I'm fine with labor supporting people who've been there for them, but let's talk about what that support has gotten us. Let's have that conversation. And that was a part of why I was running, and we just skipped that. We just skipped it, and I think we skipped it because the conversation is hard.

But for me, that's the point. We have to have this hard conversation. And if we don't have this hard conversation, Trump is going to continue kidnapping my friends. And we need to have these hard conversations. So I was really disappointed by some folks in labor. They know who they are. They see this, they'll know.

And we're gonna talk and come to some kind of agreement, but they pretty much all supported him, just, he's been here, seniority, time served.

[Tom Keck] 14:49:16
Yep.

[Maurice Brown, He/him] 14:49:17
And I'm okay if time served is enough, but let's talk about what that time served has gotten us. And for me, the interview was a part of it. For me, I said it on election day, because on election day, I wasn't declared the winner, but I had already won.

The point was to pose the question, are we okay with the way we're doing things right now? And I wanted to pose the same question to labor, just like I've posed it to many community groups. Are we okay with the way we're doing things?

[Tom Keck] 14:49:35
Yeah.

[Maurice Brown, He/him] 14:49:46
And a good amount of those conversations ended up with groups like Indivisible Onondaga County endorsing our campaign, Uplift, Syracuse DSA, New York Immigration Coalition, Citizen Action, like a lot of those groups. When that question was posed, are we okay with the way we're doing things right now? The answer was no. No, we are not okay with the way we're doing things right now. We can do things better. And labor kind of skipped that.

Instead of posing the question to the membership, the leadership was kind of just like, things are okay. We're just gonna go with the status quo, and I think we saw it on Election Day that a lot of their members did not support their candidate. If you just look at the raw numbers of how many members they have in the Assembly District, if all of their members voted for their endorsed candidates, they should have won pretty comfortably.

But they didn't. And I think that's a testament to the fact that we need to have that conversation and people appreciate having another choice.

[Tom Keck] 14:50:43
I've actually had that conversation with a couple people over the week or so since the election of, you know, labor all lined up behind Magnarelli, and DSA and Indivisible and the other left groups lined up behind you. And you won!

And I'm like, that's kind of wild. I mean, labor is supposed to be able to turn out some voters … and I don't know… I’m not trying to start a fight here.

[Maurice Brown, He/him] 14:51:07
It's kind of — so I've been working with labor. I know their processes. I know them. It's kind of a chicken egg situation where I think their membership is disengaged because of how things have been going. So when their leadership top down makes these decisions, they aren't able to organize their members in the way they should. And I think that's why we need to have the conversation of why is our membership not interested? Why is our membership not engaged, not showing up? But that's a harder conversation to have. And it sucks because we have to have hard conversations.

The alternative is they're gonna kidnap our neighbors. They're gonna, you know, end birthright citizenship. They're putting these things that I never thought we would even be discussing, because they were just ways of life, but now these things are all in play. Like, these are conversations we need to have. Roe vs. Wade was the law of the land my whole life, and now it is not. These are the consequences of, you know, going in our silos and not having these conversations, not working together, not finding that common ground. So I'm glad I got to pose the conversation. I'm really happy to see the conversation happening nationally.

Just fundamentally, we need to have that conversation. We must. We cannot chase both rabbits, and the way we have been doing things has produced a specific outcome. Are we okay with that outcome? I think not. And I think more people agree with me than disagree with me, but it wasn't unanimous.

The notion that everyone in the Democratic Party is okay just going back to the way things were before Trump, we are challenging that notion, and I think there's more of us than the party would like to accept.

[Tom Keck] 14:53:13
Yeah, I mean, based on the races downstate and the races in Colorado this week, it seems like it. Okay, last question. Top legislative priorities for 2027?

[Maurice Brown, He/him] 14:53:27
So I wanna say New York Health Act. I think that healthcare is a human right. I know that legislatively that's gonna be a really tough one.

I’ll also be pushing for the Social Housing Development Authority. It’s a public developer housing model. With the public developers, we don't have to worry about profit margins. We're not trying to make money. We're trying to build housing. So we are able to make money available for developers. We can say you can have this money, you can have this $10 million to build your housing, but it has to be affordable. It has to be low income. It has to be in these neighborhoods. It has to be transit-oriented so that the bus can stop along this route.

And we're finding around the country that even when we put those guidelines in place, they're interested in doing it. I just want to see a much bigger investment. The state of New York has committed, I want to say $12 million to the Invest Syracuse project. I want to see that number at like a hundred million.

I want to see $100 million for Syracuse, but also for Albany, Rochester. I think that we need to tax our wealthiest earners and make a really big investment in housing. And fundamentally, our housing problem here and many other places is a supply and demand issue. The supply is low, so the demand is high. If we're able to build competent, affordable units, I think we're gonna see a lot of the other problems go away, because landlords are gonna realize, oh, if I don't have quality housing, people will leave. Now they know they can't leave. If you leave, there's gonna be another person looking for your apartment.

And the landlords know it and they treat the apartments as if they're like, yeah, I don't need to fix the sink. This person complains about the sink. I'll just get rid of them, bring the next person in. Over the past 4 or 5 decades, we've seen that. And that's how you get some of the deteriorating properties we have.

But yeah, housing and healthcare are high on the list. And obviously transportation, if there's anything I can do.

[Tom Keck] 14:55:42
Amazing. Thank you so much for sitting down. I thought we might talk about the Knicks. We didn't get to that.

[Maurice Brown, He/him] 14:55:47
I mean, Knicks are world champions, so I'm good. Like, free agency and everything going on, I, like, can fully appreciate it, because I'm like, oh yeah, it would be nice to have that person, but I don't really care.

And it's never been like this in my life. So uncharted territory.

[Tom Keck] 14:56:05
Yeah, how about Mamdani's speech at the parade? I made my kids watch it.

[Maurice Brown, He/him] 14:56:13
Yes, it was a good embodiment of like we've been through a lot. We've been through a lot as Knicks fans. And even this year, you know, with that 0.4%.

But yeah, they pulled it out and I think we will too.

[Tom Keck] 14:56:28
Yeah. Amazing. Thank you so much for all you're doing, Mo.

[Maurice Brown, He/him] 14:56:32
Yes, thank you for having me. If you ever want me on the show, please let me know. You know, we can do a recurring thing. I'm trying to think of a way to do a standing public engagement, whether it's, like, I go on live the same time every month or something similar. I want to do a standing thing so that people feel accessible to me. That's been my biggest criticism of my previous opponent, is that they weren't accessible, so I want to be accessible. I want people to feel like they can come to me with any problem, even if I don't have the solution, I can help guide them towards it.

[Tom Keck] 14:57:06
I love that. In CNY Solidarity Coalition, literally our very first action in 2016, I want to say December 2016, was calling for Katko to hold town halls in the district. Yeah, that was, like, our first thing, and he wouldn't do it! Like, people have been mad ever since, you know?

[Maurice Brown, He/him] 14:57:30
Yeah. Damn, yeah, it takes me back. Shame on Katko. But no, thank you for having me, and if I can ever be helpful, don't hesitate to reach out.

[Tom Keck] 14:57:42
All right, man, and enjoy your vacation.

[Maurice Brown, He/him] 14:57:44
Thank you, Tom. Have a good one.