In this episode of Compost, Cotton & Cornrows podcast, Dominique Drakeford sits in conversation with Antonio Reynoso, Brooklyn’s 20th Borough President and the first Dominican to hold the office in New York City history. Raised in Williamsburg by Dominican immigrants who arrived seeking opportunity, Reynoso reflects on growing up in a neighborhood shaped by poverty, environmental injustice and public health disparities including asthma rates so severe that Woodhull Hospital built one of the city’s only emergency asthma units. From these early experiences, Reynoso developed a deeply human definition of sustainability that rooted in the everyday question: How do we manage the systems we cannot avoid: waste, infrastructure, industry, in ways that protect both people and planet?

Together, Dominique and Reynoso explore sustainability through the lens of birthing justice, public health, and environmental equity. Reynoso shares how Brooklyn’s maternal health crisis, where Black women are up to twelve times more likely to die during childbirth than their white counterparts, became a defining focus of his administration, leading him to invest $45 million into transformative maternal health units across Brooklyn’s public hospitals. The conversation also examines the structural forces shaping health outcomes across Central Brooklyn from food deserts and heat index disparities to underfunded parks and the erosion of the public healthcare system. Bridging data-driven governance with lived experience, Reynoso outlines his ambitious comprehensive planning framework for Brooklyn while calling on residents to participate in shaping their neighborhoods through civic engagement.

At its core, this episode asks a powerful question: What does sustainability look like when we begin at birth and build systems that allow communities to thrive across generations?

https://www.brooklynbp.nyc.gov/

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