How do you connect with kids when you’re a politician or community leader? Why you establish common ground with them, telling that you, too, once played in a local rock band or that you, too, tried out for — and failed to make — the varsity football team.
Or, if you’re Chirlane McCray, wife of New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, you remind the young’uns that you, too, were once gay, like them.
According to the New York Post, McCray is backing a program to help LBGT youth and told a group of them:
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
When I came to New York City, long ago back in 1977, I identified as a lesbian, so I know intimately the struggles that young people have had. I was not rejected by my family like so many of these young people are, but it’s really difficult.
The program McCray is touting is geared toward providing “workforce development … for runaway and homeless youth who are often LGBTQI.”
The new program will help eligible 16- to 24-year-olds score three years of paid internships, job training and mental health support through the city’s Department of Youth and Community Development and the public-private NYC Center for Youth Employment partnership.
According to the article, a price tag for the initiative was not immediately available, which could be problematic for “Mrs. de Blasio,” has had recent “cash management problems.” In March, for example, she was unable to account for $850 million in taxpayer dollars her husband entrusted to her for a mental health project.
Not that her husband is exactly a paragon of financial responsibility. Around the same time McCray “misplaced” the $850 mil, the mayor pulled the plug on his latest failure, a “Renewal school” program, which set the city back another $773 million.
