By JACK DELANEY | jdelaney@queensledger.com

Lydia Green, a twenty-nine-year-old organizer currently serving as a District Leader for District 52, is challenging long-time Assembly Member Jo Anne Simon for her seat in the same Brooklyn jurisdiction, which runs from DUMBO to Park Slope.

Green announced her bid on Monday, December 14, through a post on Instagram, positioning herself as an antidote to “establishment politicians” who “cater to niche interest groups rather than organizing towards the common good.”

“I grew up right here in Park Slope and am a product of Brooklyn public schools,” Green wrote. “This district is where I learned how to walk and write, multiply and march, and push for progress. But this district is also where I’ve learned how our government has failed us.”

Green is reaching the end of her two-year term as District Leader, an unpaid but elected position within the Democratic Party that focuses on grassroots outreach. Each Assembly District votes for two District Leaders — one male, one female — who help to elect county party chairs, nominate judges, choose poll workers, and organize voter registration drives.

“As a District Leader, I passed resolutions calling for single-payer health care and free public college,” said Green. “I’ll bring this same courage and energy to the Assembly.”

Green previously worked as a staffer on eight progressive campaigns, ranging from City Council to Congress. Her own candidacy comes at an inflection point for New York politics, as a new guard of young leftists seeks oust older, often more centrist leaders — and to fill the legislature with allies of Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani. (This generational rift is a national one: A recent Harvard poll found that 57% of voters aged 18 to 42 disapproved of the Democratic Party.)

“In both the mayoral primary and general election, voters of this district have indicated that they are hungry for a bold and unapologetically progressive type of politics,” Green told the Star, noting that she would be “a true partner with our Mayor-elect to deliver on the incoming administration’s affordability agenda for western Brooklyn.”

Green’s platform rests upon three issues: taxing the rich to fund public schools and childcare, increasing the housing stock and protecting tenants, and climate-proofing this corner of Brooklyn.

“In this district, our rents have skyrocketed, the climate crisis has flooded our waterfronts, and the few have become richer at the expense of everybody else,” said Green.

District 52 encompasses many of the most heavily gentrified neighborhoods in the borough, although areas like Gowanus still carry baggage from their industrial past.

But as officials push to build hundreds of thousands of units amid a citywide housing crisis, the incumbent, former disability rights lawyer Jo Anne Simon, has taken on high-profile roles in negotiations over multi-billion dollar projects in nearby districts — chief among them the Brooklyn Marine Terminal (BMT) in Red Hook and Atlantic Yards in Downtown Brooklyn.

Simon, 73, was a founding member of BrooklynSpeaks, a community organization that has critiqued the developers of Atlantic Yards, and joined local Red Hook reps in voting against the BMT plan, saying it needed additional studies into whether the area’s sewers and roads could accommodate a major influx of residents.

Yet Green, like local Council Member Shahana Hanif, 34, who voted yes on the BMT proposal, gestured in her campaign launch at frustrations with the slow pace of development amid a citywide housing crisis.

Green, who is queer and Jewish, traces her family’s roots in Brooklyn to Bath Beach. “My ancestors came to America with very little but eventually they were able to start their own kosher butcher shop that lasted multiple generations and helped the family survive the Great Depression,” she shared in an interview with The Workers Circle.

Now seeking to represent the borough’s western shoulder, Green will look to best Simon — who came up short in a bid to become borough president in 2021, but won her latest primary in 2024 with 80% of the vote — next November, since Assembly members are elected to two-year terms without term limits.

“Whether it’s the looming threat of ICE raids, the deepening affordability crisis, or the desperate need for housing, Brooklynites need and deserve a fierce champion,” Green said on Monday. “I’m running to be that champion.”

By JACK DELANEY | jdelaney@queensledger.com

Yongfeng Tian started fishing in 2015, after a friend convinced him to make the drive from Bensonhurst so they could try their luck in the reservoirs upstate. 

At the boat rental shop, Tian found a book listing all of New York State’s fishing records. Many have held for decades — Northern Pike (1940), Common Carp (1995), Lake Trout (2003) — but he promised himself that his name would be in there too, one day. 

“That’s been my dream,” Tian, 48, said in a phone call this week. “For 10 years, I kept fishing and fishing — it’s so hard, you know? A state record is so hard to break.”

On a breezy Sunday this past November, Tian woke up before dawn to leave Brooklyn ahead of rush hour, arriving at Cross River Reservoir in Westchester around 7 a.m. His friend had stayed home, but he wanted to be on the water; it had become a habit. He pulled out his fish finder, a sonar tool that creates an underwater map, and set out to catch some crappie or white perch. 

It was a typical day: a couple bites, but nothing revolutionary. By the time 2 p.m. rolled around, Tian was getting ready to pack up. But as he angled his boat back to shore, the sensor picked up a whole school of mystery fish, 30 feet below. 

Tian dropped his Jack, a popular brand of fishing lure, and immediately felt his line go taut. When he reeled it in, he was staring at a large white perch. “Wow,” he texted his friend. At home, the scales confirmed what he had suspected — his 3-pound, 4-ounce catch was a record-breaker. 

“I believe that’s luck,” Tian said. “You keep fishing, and you get some luck.”

The previous record, three ounces lighter, was set in 1991 in Lake Oscaletta. According to the Department of Environmental Conservation, white perch — technically a species of bass, not perch — are commonly found throughout the state, including the Hudson River.  

The DEC lists 40 fish on its recently-revamped Angler Achievement Awards Program, which now allows participants to submit entries through an app. In addition to white perch, three other records have been set this year: brook trout, fallfish, and a monstrous 37-pound, 9-ounce channel catfish.

As for Tian, his white perch is sitting in his fridge. He’s looking for a taxidermy studio that can preserve it as a trophy, in what’s known as a “skin mount.”

But even though the Bensonhurster’s decade-long dream has been realized, he plans to continue his trips to the reservoirs. When asked why, Tian is momentarily stumped. “I don’t know,” he replied. “That’s a good question.” 

After a beat, the answer comes in an excited rivulet of words. “The fish, it’s so hard to get it. You study, you learn a lot, you have your experiments. You add a lot of knowledge of fish. You need to know about the fish — where they stay, what they eat. You need to know a lot of things.”

“Then you get a fish,” he said. “And when you’ve got your fish, you’re happy.”