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Shahana Hanif has extensive experience organizing to improve housing, supporting the arts, and fighting for a better criminal justice system. Her work includes:

  • Helping create the Avenue C Plaza, which has become a beloved gathering spot for community events

  • Starting a free immigration law clinic

  • Advocating for a health care system that actually works for those who need it and for disability rights as she lives with Lupus

  • Protecting survivors of domestic violence

Shahana’s activism is well-known in her community, as well as all over Brooklyn and New York City. For her work fighting against domestic violence, Shahana was profiled in the New York Times following her work to help a young Bangladeshi woman escape from an abusive forced marriage to safety in a culturally-aware shelter. During some of 2019’s most frigid days, Shahana’s tweets during protests at the Metropolitan Detention Center drew the attention of over 4.6 million people to inmates awaiting trial who were desperately banging on their windows because the jail had no heat and no power. 

As Director of Organizing and Community Engagement for Council Member Brad Lander, one of Shahana’s responsibilities was running Participatory Budgeting (PB), a democratic process in which community members directly decide how to spend public funds. Shahana’s work leading PB spans from encouraging residents to submit their ideas, to facilitating community conversations with relevant city agencies to develop ideas into feasible plans, and to getting out the vote for the projects that make it onto the PB ballot. PB has funded $4 million in projects across District 39 during Shahana’s leadership. These projects have included:

  • An algae harvester for Prospect Park’s lakes

  • Muslim women’s self-defense workshops

  • Much-needed bathroom renovations in district schools

  • A down-payment on an elevator for the 7th Avenue F station (which will finally make a major commercial corridor and the Methodist Hospital accessible via public transportation)

Shahana was also profiled in: Bklyner, The Cut, Refinery 29, Teen Vogue. See more of her press coverage here.