My best friend is Marseille. Our guest today is Mercedes-Marseille. She's a high energy business woman, nurse and mother and she's running for New York State Senate in the 19th Senate's editorial district. Welcome, Marseille. Thank you. Thank you for coming and being here to support me. So you have been a fixture in Granarsie for decades. You have a medical supply business. You've been a nurse. You've done all these types of things. Why did you think it was the right time now to run for office? Honestly, I don't know if you are aware that I ran for City Council in 2013. And after that, I, for some reason or others, I end up doing the entry program. And when I'm listening to the young men and young women coming back and forth in jail and looking at my, my life story with my own children being a single mom and being able to do so much with them. And then by the way, my first one is about to graduate medical school. My second one graduated from my career science and finance. So I realized that I'm a blessed woman. And there is so much I can do with those young mind. And then I keep talking to them. I was able to get to make them understand. You don't have to sail back on the street. And they're very happy. We've been having conversation. And then people in the district went to the seat open. They keep on asking me to run. And then one day I was having a conversation with one of the reentry young men. And he dare me to run for office. Because he trusts me. He said, I never trust anyone, but I trust you. And I think you should because I was talking about politics. And I let him know that I ran for office. And I don't want to bother sometimes because it's so much, you know, the bureaucracy, the things and it was so much. And then he encouraged me. He told me that he will love for me to be an office and for him to work together with me. And then I was thinking about it, listening to the people in the area. And there I am running for this day. I love it. It means great story. But in terms of like you talked about reentry programs. Is that some of the things that you like to focus on when you're running? What are some of the issues that are? Yes, actually, yes. It's very important to me because what they make me realize, when I adopted my daughter, I was her fourth home. And I realized everybody thought I was crazy. And I realized all she needed is opportunity. And then when I'm, she, now she's 19, she's second semester of college. And what I'm seeing through this, to the lens of seeing those young men and young women. And I feel like pushing education is a way to go. Because most of us, we don't have money to give. But once you have basic education, you have a structure, you can do better for yourself. And that's one of my focus. I have five different areas. I single mom struggling, paying bills. And energy, paying bills. So there's a lot of things that I truly believe that we can work better in our community and improve. Okay. So just to get into the political lay of the land, I know Mercedes, you've been involved in politics a long time. And your district, Kinarse, happens to be like the seat of Brooklyn Clubhouse Power. And I understand that Frank Cedia, who's the boss of the Kings County Democratic Party, lays claim to be the Godfather of one of your children. Yes he is. Actually, Frank and I go way back. I was part of the club. I'm going to tell you honestly. But I grew up in what I'm seeing in the district. It needs more than politics. It needs somebody that cared, that'd been tested and tried. It's not about co-owning like people, just putting the people in office. But it is about the folks, the people in the district. The voters have to have their voice. And for me to have the opportunity to get the voters not only to just vote, but to be part of the family, the community, and really engage. And I'm tired of seeing the voters suppression and oppression. And sometimes I can say depression as a nurse. So I need to see more of, because a lot of people gave up in the area because of the same thing. Oh, there's powerful. Who's the power? The power is the people. The people speaking. That said, that's the end of the story. I got almost 6,000 votes last time I ran for office. So the people speaking. So the, presently, the person that's in office, even though she got elected twice in the special election, she never even reached one, I would say one third of the vote that I got. Do you think that your opponent, Roxanne Persad, do you think she's kind of like a puppet of the club? Oh, basically I'm saying I don't like to talk about people, but if it's quite frankly, what would somebody be elected with less than 1,000 votes in an area that have 318 folks living there? So that's kind of like, it's just like the people are not there. So if the people are not there, there's something somebody else is there. Somebody, uh, uh, interest is there. So that's what I'm talking about. So if people find you, if they want to perhaps give money or support your care, I love that. I love that. You know what I'm saying? I don't know. I want everybody to invest. Um, I am on 9712 flatlands Avenue. It's right across from Holy Family. We open doors for people. We open from 10 o'clock to 6, 7 o'clock. And I, I'm represented right now by the AdVence group, 39 Broadway. So I'm sure everybody can Google that and I welcome that to support. This is great. This is a journey that I've been waiting to kind of like, there's a path of my life that I have to take and I, I truly feel like I would make a difference in my community. And, um, like I said, I work with everybody and this is nothing different from me from Eastern York. When I, I represent Eastern York as a nurse, go to the home and I go to a board park and I go to, she said big tour to, to being people's home. I've been to almost everybody's home. I can imagine it broken. So they're all, they're all home. So, so as a nurse and as a community leader, being on community board and past president of 41st assembly district, uh, democratic club and TG club. So therefore, I think I've been, I've been, I've been around, long enough to know what's going on. Life. Life. Life. Life. Life. Life.