The Brooklyn Watch List

Jessica Schumer has one of the most famous political names in Brooklyn, and she’s putting it to good use. After serving as policy director for vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine in 2016, the Harvard University and Yale Law School graduate joined the effort to build a streetcar along the Brooklyn and Queens waterfront. But the project is no walk in the park. Cost estimates keep rising – to as high as $2.8 billion – and the construction timeline keeps getting extended.

Yahdon Israel is well positioned to take the borough’s signature publication into its next phase. The fashionable and erudite editor-in-chief of Brooklyn Magazine is a champion of local millennial writers, musicians, filmmakers, artists and social activists, and manages the neat trick of being close to the zeitgeist even before anyone knows it’s going to be the zeitgeist. Plus, he knows where to get a decent fish sandwich on short notice – that’s Bed-Stuy Fish Fry, in case you were wondering.

May Boeve founded her environmental advocacy group 350.org with Bill McKibben when she left college. A decade later, she’s one of the leading climate change activists in the country – and one of the few women atop the field. Boeve has since organized the National Day of Climate Action, gotten herself arrested outside the White House while protesting the Keystone XL pipeline and slammed the current administration for its response to several devastating hurricanes.

The New Kings Democrats were the new kids on the block when President Barack Obama was elected a decade ago. Now they draw mayoral hopefuls to their events, have elected their own members to office and found jobs throughout New York City government. The club’s president, Brandon West, leads a vibrant and diverse group of activists still eager to carry petitions for favored candidates in stifling summer heat because they know it takes hard work to win in September.

Since serving as Brooklyn community coordinator for the New York City Department of Education, where he helped launch the mayor’s ambitious Pre-K for All initiative, Christopher Durosinmi has switched gears and joined the Wildlife Conservation Society. The Brownsville native can be found chilling with sharks (and Rosario Dawson) at the New York Aquarium while pushing for the city to scrap plastic straws. Politics may yet be in his future, but for now there are some Central Park sea lions that need a little attention.