A disability civil rights lawyer, educator, community activist, and progressive NY State Assemblymember, Jo Anne Simon has dedicated her life to fighting for equal rights for all of us. As Congresswoman, she will work to give Brooklyn and Manhattan communities a voice in the decisions that affect their lives.
A disability civil rights lawyer, educator, community activist, and progressive NY State Assemblymember, Jo Anne Simon has dedicated her life to fighting for equal rights for all of us. As Congresswoman, she will work to give Brooklyn and Manhattan communities a voice in the decisions that affect their lives.
A disability civil rights lawyer, educator, community activist, and progressive NY State Assemblymember, Jo Anne Simon has dedicated her life to fighting for equal rights for all of us. As Congresswoman, she will work to give Brooklyn and Manhattan communities a voice in the decisions that affect their lives.
As a disability civil rights lawyer, educator, community activist, and Assemblymember, Jo Anne is a forceful advocate for our community.
Jo Anne has been a progressive leader in the New York State legislature — where she passed historic legislation on gun violence prevention, education, gender equity, and campaign finance reform. She has championed free school meals for all children regardless of their families’ ability to pay. Jo Anne helped secure equal pay for equal work, election reforms and voting rights, paid family leave, New York’s Green New Deal, and sexual harassment protections. She chairs the Assembly Committee on Ethics and Guidance.
Jo Anne grew up in a working-class neighborhood and was the first in her family to go to college. She earned a Master’s Degree in Education of the Deaf from Gallaudet University and she earned her law degree at Fordham University School of Law – which she attended at night while working full-time. Inspired by her previous work teaching deaf students, she started her own disability civil rights law firm in Downtown Brooklyn. She spent three decades protecting people with disabilities from discrimination and injustice in employment, higher education and high stakes standardized testing. She even had the honor of litigating a landmark disability rights case that eventually went to the Supreme Court.
The community is front and center to Jo Anne’s activism. She is a fierce advocate and she has fought against the closure of Long Island College Hospital (LICH) hospital, demanded more and more deeply affordable housing in the Atlantic Yards development, advocated for and secured the city’s first traffic calming study, and worked with the community to clean up the toxic Gowanus Canal and its uplands, now a federal Superfund site. She was an early pioneer pushing to bury the polluting Gowanus Expressway into an environmentally-just and sustainable tunnel and passed first-in-the-nation technology to fine illegally overweight trucks on the BQE.
Jo Anne has made her home in Brooklyn for over 40 years. Jo Anne and her husband, Bill Harris, live in Boerum Hill. She has two step-sons and two grandchildren.
Jo Anne has been a champion for abortion and reproductive health care. She was an abortion counselor early in her career. As an Assemblymember, she helped codify abortion rights into state law in 2019 to ensure this right is always protected in NY, regardless of what happens on the federal level. After the Supreme Court’s disastrous decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, she also helped passed an equality amendment to protect New Yorkers from discrimination and enshrine the right to an abortion in our State Constitution.
Jo Anne has improved access to contraceptives, healthcare, and child care. She helped pass laws to make NY a safe haven for people who will come here from other states for abortion care now that abortion is banned in many states. Our fight is mulitiracial and multi generational. She is going to fight like hell to protect access to abortion here and for women across the country.
Jo Anne champions environmentally just transportation and energy solutions, and she helped pass New York’s historic Green New Deal. With a 100% rating from leading environmental advocacy organizations, Jo Anne will fight polluters every day – our lives depend on it! We don’t have time for half-measures with the climate crisis before us. That’s why Jo Anne is fighting to transition our energy to publicly-owned, democratically-accountable renewable sources. Jo Anne has been critical in efforts to clean up the toxic Superfund site in Gowanus, Brooklyn.
Committed to public transit, alternative transportation, and smart, safe solutions for congestion, Jo Anne has been offering forward thinking, environmentally just solutions to Brooklyn’s vexing transportation issues for decades.
Gun violence is a public health crisis that is shaking our nation to its core. It is shameful and beyond comprehension that we are the only country that so devalues human life, repeatedly allowing gun violence to happen.
Jo Anne authored New York’s groundbreaking “Red Flag Law” which is the strongest in the nation. It creates a new type of court-issued order to temporarily remove firearms when someone poses a serious risk of harm to themselves or others. She also created New York’s first firearm violence research institute. But we must end the iron pipeline that enables the flow of guns from other states into New York. We simply must have federal protections, and we must fight the incredibly powerful and well-financed gun lobby.
As a lifelong educator and advocate for children, Jo Anne will fight to improve schools for all of our children and to bring down barriers for young learners. As a nationally recognized disability rights lawyer, Jo Anne’s advocacy has changed lives and laws across the country. She has led the way to ensure that students with dyslexia and related learning disabilities are identified early so they get the reading instruction they need to be proficient readers. She has worked tirelessly for students with all disabilities and will bring this expertise to Congress.
Jo Anne is a community activist, advocating to make New York the equitable, sustainable, thriving place she knows it can be for all of us. She entered public service by way of her community activism, fighting for affordable housing and community input in local land use projects. She keeps the voice of the community front and center in her work, from closing Rikers, to ensuring an environmentally sound BQE redesign, to pushing for the City’s first traffic calming study. She is a strong advocate for the LGBTQ+ community, people of color, people with disabilities, women, and people who have too often been marginalized. Jo Anne has dedicated her life to fighting for equal rights for all of us.
Our country is strongest when we have economic opportunities for everyone. This includes good jobs, affordable housing, and universal health care. She will fight for strong labor laws that allow workers to negotiate salaries, pass a higher federal minimum wage, guarantee paid family leave, and invest in a clean economy. Jo Anne will protect Medicare and fight for strong social safety net programs. She ensured our state budget invested in small businesses – and that we provided rent relief and homeowner protections to avoid evictions and foreclosures during Covid.
Jo Anne has been a champion for abortion and reproductive health care. She was an abortion counselor early in her career. As an Assemblymember, she helped codify abortion rights into state law in 2019 to ensure this right is always protected in NY, regardless of what happens on the federal level. After the Supreme Court’s disastrous decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, she also helped passed an equality amendment to protect New Yorkers from discrimination and enshrine the right to an abortion in our State Constitution.
Jo Anne has improved access to contraceptives, healthcare, and child care. She helped pass laws to make NY a safe haven for people who will come here from other states for abortion care now that abortion is banned in many states. Our fight is mulitiracial and multi generational. She is going to fight like hell to protect access to abortion here and for women across the country.
Jo Anne champions environmentally just transportation and energy solutions, and she helped pass New York’s historic Green New Deal. With a 100% rating from leading environmental advocacy organizations, Jo Anne will fight polluters every day – our lives depend on it! We don’t have time for half-measures with the climate crisis before us. That’s why Jo Anne is fighting to transition our energy to publicly-owned, democratically-accountable renewable sources. Jo Anne has been critical in efforts to clean up the toxic Superfund site in Gowanus, Brooklyn.
Committed to public transit, alternative transportation, and smart, safe solutions for congestion, Jo Anne has been offering forward thinking, environmentally just solutions to Brooklyn’s vexing transportation issues for decades.
Gun violence is a public health crisis that is shaking our nation to its core. It is shameful and beyond comprehension that we are the only country that so devalues human life, repeatedly allowing gun violence to happen.
Jo Anne authored New York’s groundbreaking “Red Flag Law” which is the strongest in the nation. It creates a new type of court-issued order to temporarily remove firearms when someone poses a serious risk of harm to themselves or others. She also created New York’s first firearm violence research institute. But we must end the iron pipeline that enables the flow of guns from other states into New York. We simply must have federal protections and, we must fight the incredibly powerful and well-financed gun lobby.
As a lifelong educator and advocate for children, Jo Anne will fight to improve schools for all of our children and to bring down barriers for young learners. As a nationally recognized disability rights lawyer, Jo Anne’s advocacy has changed lives and laws across the country. She has led the way to ensure that students with dyslexia and related learning disabilities are identified early so they get the reading instruction they need to be proficient readers, and to improve the way schools of education prepare new teachers to teach reading. She has worked tirelessly for students with all disabilities and will bring this expertise to Congress.
Jo Anne is a community activist, advocating to make New York the equitable, sustainable, thriving place she knows it can be for all of us. She entered public service by way of her community activism, fighting for affordable housing and community input in local land use projects. She keeps the voice of the community front and center in her work, from closing Rikers, to ensuring an environmentally sound BQE redesign, to pushing for the City’s first traffic calming study. She is a strong ally of the LGBTQ+ community, people of color, people with disabilities, women, and people who have too often been marginalized. Jo Anne has dedicated her life to fighting for equal rights for all of us.
Our country is strongest when we have economic opportunities for everyone. This includes good jobs, affordable housing, and universal health care. She will fight for strong labor laws that allow workers to negotiate salaries, pass a higher federal minimum wage, guarantee paid family leave, and invest in a clean economy. Jo Anne will protect Medicare and fight for strong social safety net programs. She ensured our state budget invested in small businesses – and that we provided rent relief and homeowner protections to avoid evictions and foreclosures during Covid.
Disability Rights Leaders Endorse Jo Anne Simon
We are locally and nationally-known individuals in the disability community. Our friend and colleague NYS Assemblymember Jo Anne Simon, a life-long disability rights activist, is running in the Democratic Primary for Congress in the 10th District of New York (Brooklyn, Manhattan). We endorse her wholeheartedly.
Jo Anne stands apart from other candidates by her depth of knowledge and length of activism. She knows disability issues first-hand. In Congress, she won’t have to be "educated" or lobbied.
She is a disability civil rights lawyer, former teacher of deaf children and a sign-language interpreter who is well versed on the full-range of disability issues. She fought and won a landmark disability rights case that changed lives across the country. She was on the legislative lawyering team that made important amendments to the historic Americans with Disabilities Act.
She stands apart from other candidates by the depth and breadth of her background and advocacy on behalf of our community. We urge you to vote for Jo Anne Simon for Congress.
Fmr. Sen., SD26
NYS Senator, SD19
NYS Assemblymember AD66
Fmr. Assemblymember, AD 52
Frm. NYC Councilmember, CD2
NYS Assemblymember, AD49
NYS Committee Member, AD66
NYS Committee Member, AD66
Fmr. District Leader, AD52
Immigrant Rights Leader, New Sanctuary Coalition
NYCHA TA President, Red Hook West
NYCHA TA President, Wyckoff Gardens
NYCHA TA President, Warren Street Houses
NYS Assemblymember, AD67
NYS Assemblymember, AD45
NYS Assemblymember, AD109
NYS Committee Member, AD64
Frm. NYS Committee Member, AD52
Actor & Author
fmr. Congressman, CA-15
Paid for By Jo Anne Simon For Congress