‘It goes by pretty quickly’: Van Bramer reflects on time in City Council

City Councilmember Jimmy Van Bramer is leaving office after serving Western Queens for 12 years. Eagle file photo by Andy Katz

By Jacob Kaye

It’s hard for Queens City Councilmember Jimmy Van Bramer to pick one moment across the past dozen years as the one he is most proud of.

For 12 years, Van Bramer has represented parts of Sunnyside, Woodside, Long Island City, Astoria and Dutch Kills – District 26 – in the City Council and a lot has happened.

Eventually, though, Van Bramer settles on one moment, one that was in the works long before he took his first oath of office – it’s the fall day in 2019 when the Hunters Point Library finally opened.

“That community had been promised a freestanding library for so many years and I promised the community that I would finish the job and get it done,” Van Bramer told the Eagle. “The truth is that that library died and was on life support several different times and I wouldn't let it go and kept fighting.”

“That day was a really important day, in the community and in my tenure as a council member, but also in my life,” he added. “It demonstrated one of the things about myself, which is that I keep fighting.”

The fight is one that predates his time in elected office, which, by January, will come to an end.

Van Bramer spent a decade in the late 90s and early 2000s working as the chief external affairs officer for the Queens Public Library. He also worked as an organizer for campaign reform causes and LGBTQ+ rights. Those efforts spilled over into his life as a councilmember – he’s chaired the council’s Cultural Affairs, Libraries and International Intergroup Relations Committee for his entire tenure and served on the council’s LGBTQ caucus. Van Bramer said he’s often been referred to as “the library guy.”

But throughout his time in office, the causes he has fought for have expanded, he said.

“I was always been a progressive and I always cared about and fought against inequality, obviously, as a gay man, and as someone who's been involved in social justice work,” Van Bramer said. “But I was deeply, personally impacted by the murder of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and the Black Lives Matter marches, many which took place in my district, and I marched in all of those and felt like I, and all of us, needed to redouble our efforts.”

After over a decade of being a lawmaker, Van Bramer said the summer of protests “reawakened” the activist inside him. The feeling has stuck with him, and he says that it will influence whatever it is he chooses to do next.

Van Bramer said he wouldn’t rule out a run for elected office but added that he wants to do something that helps keep engaged in social justice work and that he wants “to do something maybe a little different.”

“I want to stay involved, but I definitely want the work that I'm doing to contribute towards ending inequality, one way or another,” he said. “This work is an incredible privilege and honor to do what I've done for 12 years. It is also a very difficult job.”

One of the things he’ll miss when he leaves the council is Republican Councilmember Eric Ulrich, who will also be term-limited out of office at the end of the year.

“It might surprise a lot of folks, but Eric Ulrich is someone that I have had a lot of fun with,” Van Bramer said. “Obviously, we don’t agree on some things politically but we have always been friends and we’ve had some incredible, unforgettable moments together.”

But Van Bramer and his colleagues likely won’t go too far in their lives post-council, and the last weeks of the council’s term will give them plenty of time to say goodbye. The past two weeks in the legislative body have been packed with meetings and plans to pass bills members want to push before they leave.

“It's sort of fitting that the last week is really what a councilmember’s life feels like to me – a busy life where you're just never stopping, you're always running, you're always late to the next thing,” he said. “And it just goes by pretty quickly.”

Check back with the Eagle in the coming days and weeks for more from Queens outgoing councilmembers.