Zoe Markowitz is sixteen and in the eleventh grade at Eleanor Roosevelt High, on East Seventy-sixth Street. “My dad is a lawyer, and my mom is a banker at JP Morgan,” she said one morning, while strolling up Madison Avenue. “They, like, don’t know who I am or where I came from.” Markowitz has long brown hair and wore bright-pink lipstick and big Kate Spade sunglasses. She has taken a fashion-design class at Parsons and describes her style as “elegant punk.” She used to do Model U.N., and she’d like to get back into it. In the meantime, she’s serving as the youngest member ever on Community Board 8.
“I applied when I was fifteen, which you’re not really supposed to do,” Markowitz said. “My principal sent an e-mail basically explaining that teen-agers could now apply because of new legislation. There was this meeting at City Hall.” She had never been, but it sounded cool. “It was kind of hard to get around down there—I don’t know how the streets are organized.” New York City community boards, of which there are fifty-nine, serve as advisory bodies to the City Council, the Mayor’s Office, and other agencies; each board comprises fifty members, who are appointed by their borough president. Markowitz, who is used to applying for things—like junior high (East Side Middle) and internships (with Senator Charles Schumer)—faced a multi-round screening process. After submitting a formal application, she had a group interview, in which she was asked to participate in a team challenge: “We had to pretend we were in the wilderness and we had items that we had to list in terms of importance.” Then she had a one-on-one with her City Council representative, Ben Kallos. “We did have a frank conversation about schoolwork and how hard this would be,” Kallos said later. “She could not bring her homework to meetings.” Markowitz got the job. “My mom was like, ‘They really let you vote?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah!’ ”
Crossing Seventy-third, Markowitz explained that her issues are education and affordable housing. Although Times Square is outside her board’s jurisdiction, she has followed the controversy over the body-painted topless women who pose for photos with tourists there. “I like the whole free-the-nipple movement,” she said. “I’m a feminist, and there’s the idea that a nipple is on both genders. I personally wouldn’t walk around topless in Times Square, though.”
She’s still getting used to being on the board. “The monthly meetings are from six-thirty to nine, so when you have school it is long,” she said. “At the first meeting, I was so confused. They say ‘motion to vote on’ and then they give, like, a number. I had no idea what they were voting on.”
Her district—which extends from Fifty-ninth Street up to Ninety-sixth Street on the East Side, plus Roosevelt Island—has a lot of historic buildings. “If people want to make a change to any of those buildings, they have to go past the board,” she said. Members also weigh in on matters before the State Legislature, like whether to legalize marijuana. “I think it should be legalized,” Markowitz said. “It’s crazy—I know a boy who went to jail for a few days because of weed.” A regular item on the agenda is liquor licenses. “Sometimes people say, ‘This bar serves underage kids!’ And I’m like—” Markowitz smiled and shrugged. She is too young to buy a drink, but, she said, “I do get to decide who gets a liquor license.”
Her classmates for the most part are not into politics. “Everyone is obsessed with clothes,” she said. “And Kanye West.” Several other teen-agers have joined community boards; they compare notes in a Facebook group. She has befriended a septuagenarian CB8 member named Dave.
Markowitz’s dream job is Secretary of State. “But a lot of people are mad at John Kerry right now about the Iran nuclear deal, so, I mean, I don’t know if I want to be hated so much,” she said. She likes Bill de Blasio well enough. “A lot of kids are like, ‘Oh, no snow day!’ ” She rolled her eyes.
This summer, during her internship in Chuck Schumer’s Manhattan office, Markowitz did casework, mostly, which meant answering the phone and logging “concerns.” She was in the room recently when the Senator gave a press conference with Amy Schumer, who is his cousin, on expanding gun control. Markowitz, who founded Students for Sensible Gun Laws at school, was thrilled. “I’ve seen all of her sketches,” she said, of the comedian. Had she seen “Trainwreck”? She sighed. “No! It’s rated R.” ♦
