Elected last fall, twenty-eight-year-old City Councilwoman Diana Reyna represents parts of Williamsburg and Bushwick. She is also the first elected Dominican woman in New York City politics.

During the excessively hot summer of 1997, I was evicted from my illegal loft in Williamsburg. Being eight months pregnant, I didn’t fight it. The woman I rented from—who, oddly enough, was eight months pregnant—told me she was being threatened by the landlord.