Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., was accused of "not being connected to the community" for considering renaming a post office in her Queens district that honors LGBTQ pioneers.
According to the congresswoman’s website, she is currently accepting suggestions for the Jeanne and Jules Manford Post Office Building in Jackson Heights.
Considered the first parent to march with their child in an LGBTQ parade in 1972, Jeanne Manford founded PFLAG, the country’s first LGBT group designed to build solidarity between parents and LGBT children, with support from her husband the following year.
Former City Councilman Daniel Dromm, D-Queens, told the Daily News that changing the name would "erase our history."
Dromm worked with Ocasio-Cortez’s predecessor Joseph Crowley to name the post office after the Manfords five years ago.
"Is it that she doesn’t know our history?" Dromm told the News on Sunday. "Did they not check to see who the post office is named after right now? Does she not know who Jeanne Manford was?"
Ocasio-Cortez spokeswoman Lauren Hitt told the paper that it’s standard practice for members of Congress to rename post offices, and that the congresswoman is "very open" to keeping the Manford name.
Suggestions are also being solicited for a Corona, Queens, post office as well, according to the New York representative’s website.
"We’ll consider all community input," Hitt told the News. "It seemed like a small but interesting way to engage our community in the legislative process."
According to Hitt, Ocasio-Cortez proposed the name change after some members of the community suggested honoring the late LGBTQ activist Lorena Borjas, who died in 2020.
Dromm said that this was the wrong way to go about it.
"You don’t take one pioneer of the LGBT movement and pit them against another person," he told the News.
Dromm helped Jeanne Manford found PFLAG’s Queens chapter and noted that the Manfords and their son Morty are deceased.
Allen Roskoff, an LGBTQ activist and head of the Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club, also criticized the proposal.
"How dare she put our community’s heritage up for a popularity contest or a vote?" he said. "We are outraged."
Both Dromm and Roskoff said they generally support Ocasio-Cortez.
"I like her policies, but this is typical of her not being connected to the community," Dromm said.
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