Photos by Allen Ying
Paperboy Prince is everything millennials need in a politician. They have the ideas and the creativity to implement revolutionary change. After growing up in D.C., their interest in politics piqued while attending Maryland University. Through internships at various news stations and heavy activism throughout college, Paperboy is an amalgamation of love, unity, knowledge, and peace.
Paperboy’s Instagram is a hodgepodge of their iconic everyday outfits: wedding dresses on the basketball court, red capes, crowns on top of lime green wigs. They’re not shy about putting on a show to spread political awareness, or driving around Brooklyn in a decked-out renovated unicorn school bus with a makeshift stage on the roof, which they use as a podium for protests and rally speeches, from which they shout voting chants to rally support for their campaign.
After the botched Primaries, with delays in counting 400,000 mail-in ballots and the in-person elections missing local ballots, Paperboy has worked hard to represent Brooklyn the best way they know how: by educating the masses. Paperboy uses social media, especially Instagram, as a way to spread knowledge and increase voter turnout while also working within the Brooklyn community.
What other sort of projects are you working on? According to an interview with Patch, you’re working on an app that will get the people in direct communication with representatives and let constituents vote on issues their rep should be working on each day. Is the app still in the works?
Yeah, that’s still in the works. We got a lot of people that reached out that wanted to help with that, like [they had with] the campaign. That was part of what I was talking about when I said I got so focused on doing the traditional thing, you know the campaign got so busy at a certain point that we didn’t have time to code all of this stuff during the election. But the idea is out there and we implemented it on a small scale.We’re planning on starting a community center as well.
I got some fashion stuff coming out, I got music coming out. Films… part of all this is that you can have the best idea in the world, but if you don’t know how to get it to the people it doesn’t exist, right? So here, we have the dope idea and we just have to do a better job of relaying it to the people… through clothes, through music, through media. I’m gonna be able to express the things that we’re fighting for through unique platforms, just in a really unique way.
For example, I did a Yang event and a tour that was based around universal basic income. I had a haircut that was [dyed with a] “Y” on one side and then it said “$1000.” On my head. I was at the phone store, Metro PCS, so I’m in the hood, and this dude comes up to me and he says, ‘You got 1000 dollars in yo head, you getting money huh i like it player.’ I said ‘Oh haha that’s a good one.’ He said what’s that for. I’m like oh well you ever heard of Andrew Yang? His policy is universal basic income which basically means $1000 a month for everyone over 18 no questions asked, you should look it up.
He was like, ‘Man that’s genius. If we had that there wouldn’t be any crime.’ This is the first thing out of this person’s mouth who never heard of Andrew Yang, who never heard of universal basic income, who never heard of me. But he immediately put together that with something like $1000 a month here in Brooklyn… that would end crime. What got us to having that conversation about federal policy in a hood cell phone store was my unique way of presenting it. I had it in my hair. How many more people are gonna have conversations about these different policy platforms once they have it on a t-shirt, or once they have it in a song they can listen to and once it’s a dance on TikTok?
We are also working on bringing healthcare to the people. I am partnering with another app that will basically bring doctors and health care professionals right to your neighborhood. I’m already working on healthcare right now before getting into office because much bigger than getting me elected is making sure everyone feels loved and making sure everyone is inspired and taken care of, and that starts with our local community.
My main message is love. It’s about loving other people, it’s about being a kind person. It’s about not giving up on people. Our campaign is for the misfits, for the people that have been given up on, for the people who felt like they’ve been counted out or underestimated. So we want to believe in those people, we want to empower those people.
For more photos and the full feature, check out Issue 9 available to order now