Rep. Ritchie Torres, DN.Y., could feel “the weight of history” on his shoulders when the first-year member of Congress first entered the House floor on January 3rd. The office where Rep. John F. Kennedy once sat down now has Torres’ name on it.
“It was surreal for me to go to my office for the first time,” Torres said. “I never thought I would undertake a journey that would take me from public housing in the Bronx to the House of Representatives in Washington, DC.”
Torres, 32, made history as the first gay Afro Latino person to be elected to Congress. He is the son of a black mother and a Puerto Rican father. He represents the 15th Congress District of New York, located in the Bronx, where he was born and bred. Its district, the most democratic in the country, is 64 percent Latino and 30 percent black.
“I was raised by a single parent who raised three children on the minimum wage.” The South Bronx is full of single moms like mine who have struggled, sacrificed and suffered so that their children have a better life than they do. . ”
“My increase in Congress belongs just as much to my mother as to me,” Torres said.
‘A bigger story’
Torres takes office during one of the most difficult times in recent US history – more than 427,000 people have been killed by the coronavirus pandemic and more than 25 million have been infected by the virus. His community was hit hard; Since the beginning of the pandemic, Covid-19 hospitalizations and death rates have been high throughout the Bronx, the poorest congressional district in the country.
“Covid-19 is more than a public health crisis,” he said. ‘It tells a bigger story about the deeper inequalities and injustices in American society – the digital divide, a lack of access to fresh food, a lack of income, home security, severe overcrowding, lack of access to health care, existing conditions – all these things are manifestations of systemic racism. ‘
In its first week in Washington, DC, tackling the effects of the pandemic would soon compete with another crisis.
Just days after Torres was sworn in, a violent crowd of then-President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol. The rioters, many of whom were aligned with white supremacist groups and ideals, effectively interrupted a January 6 ceremonial event to confirm that then-president Joe Biden had won the November election.
“The uprising is not just a siege on the capital. “This is a siege on the 117th Congress, the most diverse Congress in the history of the United States,” Torres said. “It is a siege on multiracial, multi-ethnic democracy.”
That same week, Torres joined lawmakers in the House who voted to accuse Trump.
” A year ago, if you were to tell me that I would become a Member of Congress during a contagious infectious disease, that I would witness a violent assault on the Capitol during Election College and that I would vote for Donald To accuse Trump. “I would have said, ‘That sounds like the movie,'” he said.
From ‘lowest point’ to youngest councilor
Torres was born in 1988, just five minutes after his twin brother. His mother named him after the late Mexican American singer Ritchie Valens after the release of the 1987 film “La Bamba”.
‘She named my brother after the Reuben sandwich, and me after Ritchie Valens. You can deduce who the favorite boy is, ‘Torres said jokingly.
His mother raised the twins and their sister in a small apartment in the New York City Housing Authority, which, according to Torres, had mold, leaks, lead, “and without constant heat and hot water in the winter.”
Before Torres made history in Congress, at the age of 25, Torres became the youngest member of New York City’s city council and the first openly gay candidate to be elected to the legislature in the Bronx. As a board member, he helped give a $ 3 billion grant to the Federal Emergency Management Agency after Hurricane Sandy devastated the already dilapidated buildings for housing authorities and opened the first shelter for LGBTQ young adults in the Bronx.
“What was remarkable was that I was at the lowest point in my life seven years ahead of time,” he said.
Torres recently left college after struggling with depression, drug abuse and grief following the loss of his best friend, who died of an opioid overdose. “There were moments that I thought about taking my own life because the world around me collapsed,” he said.
He found an opportunity to channel his interests around affordable housing issues while working in City Councilman Jimmy Vacca’s office. Torres later ran and was elected to city council in 2013. “Never lose hope in your moments of greatest darkness,” he said. “For me, this is the lesson of my life.”
The ‘blessing and burden’
The pandemic strengthened Torres’ central mission, “to break the cycle of racially-concentrated poverty,” which began tackling decades of federal disinvestment in the housing authority, which houses more than 400,000 low-income New Yorkers.
While his political career is mostly shaped by his experience in the growth of public housing, he has also campaigned for job creation initiatives, to address health inequalities and segregation in public schools, and to expand services for the elderly, youth and immigrants .
“We have seen in America that the unraveling of the social safety net,” Torres said, “and the communities that pay the most expensive price are communities of color left behind by the federal government and hit the hardest by Covid19.”
He admits there is a lot to tackle.
“Representation is just as much a blessing as a burden,” he said. ‘I am grateful for the blessing and the burden of public service; I promised my voters that I would work my heart out for it. ‘
“I was careful to tell them that I am not a miracle worker, I can not pull a magic wand out of the air and magically solve every problem, but I am a worker. I am a warrior,” he said. he said.
Torres recently partnered with representative Darren Soto, D-Fla., Who is also of Puerto Rican heritage, to calls on the Biden government to release disaster recovery funds to Puerto Rico, and with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, DN.Y., to to support essential workers on a week-long strike to demand higher wages.
A ‘passing the torch’
Torres managed to rise through the ranks of the New York City Council and triumph last summer in a busy pre-election to replace Rep. To replace José Serrano, a 16-term Democrat from the South Bronx, who announced his retirement in 2019 after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. .
Ed García Conde, a longtime Bronx resident and activist, said Serrano was a big problem. ‘Many people I know, including myself, have been concerned about the loss of a Puerto Rican congressman with all the seniority that could be a voice for the Puerto Rican community – for us, visibility and representation are still important. ‘
“The South Bronx was a landfill for a lot of pollution,” either because of truck traffic or factories, said García Conde, who founded the hyperlocal news website Welcome2TheBronx. The district has a high number of asthma and other health issues, making environmental justice an important issue, he said.
During his campaign, Torres raised significantly more money than at least nine other of his opponents combined. Unlike some of his rivals, he did not limit himself to accepting money from real estate donors and other corporate interests, a move that caused skepticism among some progressive Democrats. Two major LGBTQ political groups, Equality PAC and The Victory Fund, also raised money on his behalf in an effort to give him an edge over opponent Ruben Díaz Sr., who has a history of anti-gay remarks.
Torres said that although he sees himself as’ my own person with my own priorities and experiences, it’s not lost on me that I continue a half-century tradition of Latino leadership in the South Bronx – from Herman Badillo to Bob García, to José Serrano, to myself. “He said,” When José Serrano first entered the U.S. Congress, I was just two. The fact that I am succeeding him at the age of 32 is a real torch. “
When he began his freshman year in Congress, Torres said voters know his deep roots in the community, as well as his story.
“No one gave me anything on a silver platter,” he said. “I had to fight for everything I have in my life.”
Follow NBCBLK on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.