Reona Alam from Castle Hill, a current freshman at Hunter College, doesn’t have a typical college student’s part-time job. Instead of babysitting or working retail, she is an intern with Council Member Shekar Krishnan’s office in Queens, getting a front-row seat to local politics in action.
Alam is the inaugural Public Service Intern for the Coalition for Asian American Children and Families (CACF), which established the internship to place young people into the offices of local government officials. As an alum of the organization’s Asian American Student Advocacy Project (ASAP), Alam already understood how to be a leader in her community and was more than willing to jump into Krishnan’s office representing Jackson Heights and Elmhurst.
Although she was new to that kind of work, Alam said she felt confident that her upbringing in Castle Hill and Parkchester — which she called a “mini-Jackson Heights” — prepared her well for helping constituents in Queens. Knowing Krishnan’s support for the CACF programs that trained her, Alam’s attitude was, “Yeah, sure, put me in that office,” she told the Bronx Times.
Alam works about 16 hours per week with Krishnan and will continue throughout the academic year handling constituent cases, creating graphics for social media, helping create the community newsletter, assisting at local events and conducting legislative research, for example on brush fires and sex trafficking awareness campaigns, two issues that have recently hit home in the Queens community.
For the daughter of Bengali immigrants who is now studying political science at Hunter on a pre-law track, the importance of understanding herself and her culture is paramount. Alam said although she grew up surrounded by Bengalis, she often felt a disconnect from the culture, as someone speaks the language and grew up in the U.S.
“Sometimes I wouldn’t feel I was Bengali enough,” she said. “There was always that gap that existed.”
Although the Bronx is most often associated with Latino and Black communities, Alam said her middle school was at least half Bengali, and the South Asian community there was strong. She has fond memories of the part of Parkchester she called a “mini-Jackson Heights.”
“My dad used to go there and drink chaa [the Bengali word for chai, meaning tea] with his buddies after work, and my mom would go shopping there every morning after she dropped me and my brother off at school,” she said.
These experiences and explorations of identity help Alam to step into — not shy away from — law and policy fields that may have little South Asian and Muslim representation. She said she has always loved history, current events and international relations, subjects she can leverage to benefit her community because in an era of rampant misinformation, having knowledge of those areas can be critical.
“A lot of times, AAPI [Asian American Pacific Islander] communities are taken advantage of,” said Alam.
She said when she was younger, she had many ingrained assumptions about what South Asians do or don’t do. “I also just didn’t feel seen or heard when I was younger, so there were a lot of niche things about being Bengali that I didn’t see,” she said.
But as she continues working in Council Member Krishnan’s office and studying towards a career in international law, Alam brings a sense of cultural pride and hopes to see more people like her in the offices of government, policy and advocacy.
Young people should be careful not to keep themselves out of leadership roles, said Alam. She encourages fellow students to try many different opportunities, even if they seem unappealing at first, and to avoid placing artificial limits on themselves. “When we’re in these spaces, it gives us more resources to work better at uplifting our voices and our community as a whole.”
Reach Emily Swanson at eswanson@schnepsmedia.com or (646) 717-0015. For more coverage, follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram @bronxtimes
