“Side business?” Prieto asked, genuinely confused. “I think my job representing Sunset Park isn’t going to leave me much room for a side business.”
The speaker had laughed, clapped his hand on his back, and said, “Turns out our political dynamo is a real Pollyanna.” The nickname stuck, at least his first term, as he was genuinely shocked each time he discovered a new act of corruption or self-dealing going on with his colleagues.
They almost all had side businesses based in their districts. From pizzerias to laundromats to small accounting shops. Always storefronts that looked, to their constituents, like investments in their communities, but in reality were vehicles to clean the money that passed into their hands to secure votes for policies and measures favorable to a class of people living far from the neighborhoods they were representing. So much of this was happening in the open, or the near open, that, when discussing upcoming votes or meetings people were taking with developers and financiers, they would sometimes look Prieto’s way and say, “Pollyanna doesn’t have a problem with this, right?” This was their way of reminding him that if he wanted to play by the rules, no problem, as long as he didn’t fuck stuff up for the rest of them. It was his sister who pointed out to him that he could work this to his advantage, parlaying his silence into leverage over his colleagues for votes on matters that would benefit his small idyll of South Brooklyn, an area that, in those days, commanded very little attention in the city.
Sometimes, when he contemplated the direction of his life, he felt his wounds were self-inflicted. He ran for office because everyone ignored his neighborhood—the board of education and their overcrowded schools, the cops （except when they shot kids in the street with impunity）， the sanitation department, elected officials. These days, all eyes were on Sunset Park, and it was he, Prieto, who had put them there. For better and for worse.
Before his mom bounced, Prieto had planned on applying to colleges outside of New York. He was desperate for some distance from what had heretofore been his life. His aunt took him to D.C. to see American and Georgetown; he sat in on classes at Howard. But when his senior year rolled around, his mom was gone, and his dad was in a bad way, and Prieto’s brain hurt just thinking about filling out those financial aid forms. Whose income tax return did he use? The Radical or the Junkie? So, he applied to a bunch of SUNYs and wound up at Buffalo.
He joined a Latino Greek figuring that, with his own family in shambles, having some brothers might not be a bad thing. It turned into his lifeline. Pledging, living with his line brothers, the public vow of silence, wearing the uniform for nearly eight weeks. It provided him with structure and closeness at a time when he’d felt alone and flailing. His brothers held him up when no one in his own family could.
He’d started college wanting to become Brooklyn’s Johnny Cochran: using law to fight police brutality. But an environmental justice class he took made him realize that the cops were just one small thread of a tightly woven system of discrimination. He was shaken to discover how systemically government and industry had imperiled the health of minority communities for convenience and profit. The course opened his eyes and invigorated him in a way his parents’ Brown Power rhetoric never had. By the middle of his sophomore year, his father was in full-blown crisis. No one asked Prieto to come back, but he wanted to be there for his family. With Tía Lola’s help he proved he was “legally emancipated” and transferred to NYU with a full ride, commuting to class from Abuelita’s. It was right around this time that the city was trying to erect a waste-processing plant in Sunset Park, just a few blocks from their home. He emailed his line brothers saying, “I’m not religious, but God brought me home to fight this.” He linked up with the Latino Youth League and the Community Board and made arguments so eloquent, he wanted to tape them and mail them to his professor up at Buffalo, just to let him know he’d been listening. The Daily News, The New York Times, even the Post covered their fight and the city buckled under the pressure. He’d found his calling.
Then, just a year later, despite public outcry, outside the light of day in a not-quite-legal move, the waste-processing plant seemed to have arisen overnight. By this time, Prieto was in law school. He was livid and scrappy—filing motions as a private citizen against the city, doing presentations on community health impact for the City Council. He was handsome and eloquent. The news cameras loved him; he was the perfect salve for White Guilt. He had been practicing law and running a campaign to block a prison expansion when the local Democrats came to suggest he might run for the City Council seat that was opening up. Prieto couldn’t think of a better way to protect his ’hood.