Queens community board worker says she was pushed out for being a 'middle-aged white woman'

Debra Markell Kleiner served Queens Community Board 2 for 18 years. Last month, the board fired her. And according to Kleiner, the chair told her exactly why: the demographics had changed, and the board would never go back to the way it was.

She is 66 years old. She had filed papers to retire in June, weeks before the termination came down. The firing cost her the final months she needed to complete 28 years of city service, reducing her pension in the process. Chair Anatole Ashraf called it a personnel matter and said the decision was "all performance-based and following proper procedures and protocols." The board has offered no specifics beyond that.

Kleiner retained an attorney and is seeking justice. Forty-seven district managers from across New York City signed a letter expressing outrage at what they described as a decision driven by "personal animus."

What the chair actually said

Kleiner didn't speculate about her firing. According to the New York Post, she says she was told directly.

"I'm a middle-aged white woman and I've been clearly told that the demographics have changed and this board will never go back to the way it once was by the chair."

She repeated it for emphasis, making clear this was not an inference:

"Those were his words: Demographics have changed and the board itself will never go back to the way it was."

Ashraf's response was brief. He called the termination a personnel matter and said proper procedures were followed. He offered no rebuttal to Kleiner's account of the conversation. No documentation of performance failures was made public. No specific misconduct was alleged on the record.

Joseph Marziliano, who leads Queens Community Board 11 in Bayside, put it plainly:

"In the absence of any hard evidence being presented to the community or to the city employee herself, no other determination can really be drawn or no other assumption could really be made [that this was personal]."

Fired in secret, on the way to retirement

The termination vote was held in an executive committee meeting closed to the public. Kleiner described what followed in terms that don't require editorial amplification:

"They have just unjustly harassed and terminated me in secrecy."

She had filed her retirement papers weeks earlier, intending to leave in June. The firing stripped away the remaining months she needed to reach 28 years of city service. The pension calculation took the hit.

"They basically took the food out of my mouth and didn't let me qualify for 28 years in the city of New York."

Then came the contradiction the left never sees in itself. These are the same people who talk about making sure everyone has jobs, food on the table, and a livable wage. Kleiner saw through it:

"These are people that talk about how they want to make sure everybody is served, and people have jobs and people have food on their table and serve their family. They actually decided they didn't care how that affects one's livelihood."

Let that sink in.

The political machinery behind the firing

An unnamed insider described the situation without much ambiguity: "That board has been totally infiltrated by the DSA and far-left people, and they were trying to smoke out everybody who wasn't in lockstep with their agenda."

Former Councilmember Bob Holden connected the dots:

"Socialism is the order of the day now that we're seeing in New York City and board two is probably one of the most radical."

Holden didn't stop there. He described a pattern he's watched develop across far-left institutions:

"I've noticed that my colleagues on the far left are far less tolerant. They don't like different political opinions. If they perceive you as not being with them, they're going to try to stifle you and, in this case, get rid of you … It actually reeks with a political decision and it's disgusting."

Republican Councilmember Joann Ariola called it a witch hunt. The context lends weight to that description. Two months before the firing, the city's Democratic Socialists of America had publicly called for members to take over "lower-level" government entities. Community boards are exactly that: lower-level, locally embedded, and largely invisible to most voters.

This is how the institutional capture works. Not with grand speeches or ballot initiatives. With personnel votes in closed executive sessions.

Kleiner's record, and the counterarguments

The board's defenders offered their version. Former chair Denise Keehan-Smith, who was herself dropped from the board after Kleiner filed a discrimination complaint against her in 2020, said Kleiner had a pattern of behavior:

"She was not meeting our expectations … She was a city employee making six figures, and I couldn't find her. It was just the perception that she's untouchable."

An unnamed former board member alleged issues with follow-up, direction-taking, and insubordination. That discrimination complaint Kleiner filed against Keehan-Smith was ultimately dismissed by the borough president. Keehan-Smith denied it was retaliation, pointing to Kleiner's history of conflict across multiple board chairs.

Kleiner acknowledged the political tension but argued it was beside the point:

"This latest regime, our views are politically different, but my job is to execute the wishes of the board."

That's a reasonable position for a civil servant. District managers are administrators, not ideologues. Firing one because the "demographics have changed" is not a performance review. It is a purge dressed up in HR language.

The bigger picture in Queens

What happened to Kleiner is not an isolated incident. It fits a deliberate and documented strategy. The NYC-DSA has spent years building political infrastructure at every level of New York government, from state assembly seats to, apparently, community board staffing decisions. The organization helped power Mayor Zohran Mamdani to a mayoral victory, runs a field operation that knocked on over a million doors, and has now turned its attention to the granular machinery of local governance.

Community boards are not glamorous. They handle zoning variances, noise complaints, and neighborhood land use. Which is precisely why they matter. Control the board, control the process. Control the process, control the neighborhood. Control the neighborhood, control the city.

Marziliano captured the procedural failure at the heart of the Kleiner case:

"It just doesn't make sense to us as to how this had any merit because if you were going to discipline someone, you would put the information out there."

They didn't put the information out there. They voted in secret, offered no documented evidence, and told an 18-year employee who was weeks from retirement that the demographics had changed.

The left lectures constantly about protecting workers, lifting voices, and centering the marginalized. Debra Markell Kleiner spent nearly two decades in public service, ran for City Council, and was on her way to a retirement she'd earned. She got a closed-door vote and a smaller pension instead.

Forty-seven of her colleagues across the city signed a letter calling it wrong. Her attorney is preparing a case. And the board that fired her is still telling anyone who asks that it was all perfectly routine.

Some purges are that transparent.