Experience and Qualifications
My career has centered on community organizing and public advocacy particularly regarding immigration reform, police accountability, and economic justice. I served as lead organizer at the Arab American Association of New York, running campaigns to make Eid a public school holiday and to pass a $15 minimum wage. I worked with the NY Immigration Coalition and Communities United for Police Reform to pass the Community Safety Act and Right to Know Act. I served on the Steering Committee of the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights. I was one of the lead organizers for the Not on Our Dime Campaign. Before running, I worked as Associate Director of Partnerships at CUNY CLEAR — an organization and legal clinic leading the struggle for civil liberties, including defending student activists targeted by ICE.
Community Involvement
I have been involved in social justice movements for over a decade, primarily as a community organizer and coalition builder working with directly impacted communities. Politically, I am a member of the Democratic Socialists of America and have worked closely with socialist organizers and elected officials to advance a working-class, anti-racist, and internationalist agenda.
Education
I have a bachelor's degree in International Studies from the City College of NY, and a postgraduate degree in the study of religion and social justice from the University of Johannesburg.
Campaign Instagram
www.instagram.com/aberkawas/
My top priorities are protecting immigrant communities, economic justice, and making Queens affordable for everyone.
Through stronger protections for immigrant workers, policies like New York for All, I aim to ensure that everyone can access public services and participate fully in civic life. While Trump is deporting our immigrant neighbors at an unprecedented rate, we must push back by having the strongest anti-ICE legislation. Costs are skyrocketing across the nation because Trump’s oligarchy and the military industrial complex are generating record profits by manipulating the market and entering another forever war.
New Yorkers deserve a government that addresses the largest costs they face. We can do this by securing universal childcare, raising the minimum wage to $30, and building green social housing.
All of this is possible if we tax the rich. We can fund housing, childcare, healthcare, and climate solutions if we stop balancing the budget on the backs of working people.
Hurricane Sandy killed 43 New Yorkers and the clean up of its fallout was estimated to have cost an additional $8 billion due to exacerbated damage that was heightened by climate change. Just recently, in October 2025 a flash flood killed two New Yorkers who passed away in unregulated basement apartments. We have a cost of living crisis which is pushing more people to live in precarious circumstances, and become even more at risk for climate-caused tragedies.
The Green New Deal creates a twin solution for the climate crisis and our current lack of good-paying union jobs. In order to halt the worsening climate crisis, we need to pursue a massive campaign that constructs renewable energy and pursue a public works campaign to increase our resiliency to the changing climate. I will work to ensure our governor implements the Build Public Renewables Act and help lead the fight against her rollback of Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act.
As an American Muslim who has worked in community organizations in New York since 2013, I have worked to build coalitions centered on racial justice and addressing the root causes of racial injustice and systemic inequalities After my tenure at AAANY, I worked for the Take on Hate Campaign, a racial justice campaign under the National Network of Arab American Communities.
As someone whose father sat in detention at Riker’s Island for 3 years while awaiting a decision on his immigration case, criminal justice reform is very close to my heart. At the state level, I would work with reform groups to continue with reduction of cash bail and other pre-trial detention policies that harm the lives of the accused. Furthermore I believe in strong police accountability, as well as accountability for correction officers, to ensure fair and humane treatment for New Yorkers in the criminal justice system.
We should fight fire with fire and redraw district maps in New York to maintain political representation across the country. If dozens of representative seats will be lost in red states, we need to do our part in blue states to build them back up. I support any measures in New York State that aggressively redraw the voting maps to protect equal and fair political representation.
Long term, I’d like to explore changing how we vote for federal offices in the first place, looking into options like proportional representation. New York could propose models at the state level that might help inspire constitutional amendments, so that one day we have a political model that does not rely on dueling gerrymandered maps between states.
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