Here are some fun facts about Queens you may or may not know: it’s the largest of the city’s boroughs. In fact, if it was an independent city, it would be the fourth largest city in the U.S. It’s also the most ethnically diverse urban area in the world, with nearly half its residents foreign-born. It’s home to a baseball team, the National Tennis Center and both of the city’s airports. But it was also the borough hardest hit in the pandemic.

Donovan Richards has been the borough’s leader for nearly a year, and served as a City Council member for seven years before that.  Richards joins In Focus for an in-depth, no-holds-barred interview covering all of the issues important to Queens. He begins with a walk through Woodside with Cheryl Wills, starting at a site destined to be a brand new 3,000-seat high school, to talk about the desperate need for school seats in Queens, and how education is one of the keys to stopping young people from picking up guns.

He also talks about the urgency involved in getting the borough’s all-important small businesses up and running in the face of the pandemic, how far the borough has come, but how far it still has to go to find the bright future he sees for the place where he has spent his life.