To New Yorkers, and Conscientious People Everywhere,
I wrote this in February 2022, and subsequently published on Medium. I am adding it here on Collate because I sense this is a place being constructed with the most useful powers social media in mind. I wanted my first contribution to be meaningful, and this piece captures so much of who I am, so no better way than this to introduce myself.
American Ghosts: Black History, Biden, Adams and Promised Peril to Black New York:
New York City and its political landscape is at the uniquely American nexus of amnesia, violence, and sensationalism: the battlefield of ideas, new and old, where millions of people and billions of dollars offer an example to younger cities of how to respond to the myriad of problems we face. While families grieve the killings of two NYPD officers, Jason Rivera, and Wilbert Mora, NYC Mayor Eric Adams, a former NYPD officer, is poised to receive the council of President Biden, an architect of the notorious [color=inherit]
1994 crime law, to respond to increases in gun violence across the five-boroughs. Mayor Adams touts receiving over 70% of the Black vote in NYC , and still, the ghosts of American history bubble, and seethe at the seams as he promises to resurrect a demonstrably racist plainclothes crime unit, and perhaps most nefarious, a story of New York, its streets, its culture, its ebb and flow of conflict and peace, that is so racist,
only a Black mayor could tell it.
I am a Black, gay, formerly homeless, community organizer, and the director of organizing of VOCAL-NY, a statewide community-based organization working with people impacted by the 94’ crime law, stop and frisk, and the silent, but distinctively racist homelessness and overdose crises. I came of age in the aftermath of broken families whose suffering reverberates throughout time culturally and structurally, where in Black History Month of 2022, [color=inherit]
43 New Yorkers held in NYS prisons have died from COVID-related complications.
Candidate Adams was denied support from progressive New Yorkers not only because he is a former police officer, but because he indicated that he’d legislate from an orientation that disregarded the immediacy of care and compassion needed as response to community violence as we all contended with an uptick amid the economic, social, and psychological toll of the COVID-19 pandemic. We were right to vehemently oppose his election.
Last week, Mayor Adams released a [color=inherit]
plainclothes anti-crime unit has a documented history of extrajudicial killings of Black and brown people, most notably, 1999’s Amadou Diallo.
Only a week prior, New Yorkers returning to the subways were horrified by the tragic death of Michelle Go, who was pushed into an oncoming train by a man experiencing mental health complexities. Go was the latest in a string of anti-Asian assaults, as New Yorkers grappled with a 300% increase since former president Trump’s coupling of Asian communities with COVID. Mayor Adams and Governor Hochul together championed [color=inherit]
a plan to increase NYPD presence underground alongside units of mental healthcare professionals and outreach workers, while committing to no meaningful plan to rapidly rehouse homeless New Yorkers or funding for a popular section-8 like housing voucher program being considered in the state legislature, S2804B/A370B. Governor Hochul also allowed the eviction moratorium to expire despite housing advocates’ concern that it could lead to an increase in homelessness, adding to a crisis that rivals that of the great depression. What will happen to the tens-of-thousands of Black New Yorker’s that are behind on rent?
Of course, I don’t believe the Mayor’s ire is borne of a racist heart. Regardless of politics or professions, he is
still a Black man. I want to believe that Mayor Adams is interested in the thriving of Black communities across NYC. However, the phantoms of a fundamentally racist story are core to his early attempts to generate, and maintain safety in NYC. He neglects that the formation of
most institutions, like the NYPD, and arguably, the fundamental structures of the American pursuit of democracy, are shaped, morphed, and persist in tandem with the struggle of Black Americans catching hell and demanding better conditions and a shot at the American dream. For so many of us it’s a waking-nightmare, especially those that live in communities of color slated to have an elevated police presence.
On Thursday, as President Biden joins Mayor Adams to discuss bringing
law and order to NYC, I am helping organize a Black-led community vigil for those lost to gun violence. We are gathering at the Harlem Harriet Tubman memorial, a woman whose story defies the confines of her time because of her relentless, subversive demands and defiant claim towards liberation, for herself, her people, and ultimately, all people. The ghosts of Black ancestors: Tubman, Douglass, Baker, King, Baldwin, Chisholm, Morrison, hooks, compel us, to gather and imagine a new way forward, to challenge, again, the historic specter of a country that hates those of us that make it what it is.
In short, Adams doesn’t need to call on Biden to solve New York’s problems. He can look no further than his own backyard. The very organizations and communities that called to defund the police in 2020, amid a popular uprising that dwarfed most uprisings in American history, have been offering solutions that address the root causes of violence in our communities for years. Instead of being concerned about the palatability of the phrase, or the political threat of being associated with an intentionally misconstrued concept, the Mayor should take into account the evidence-based call to reorient how the city distributes resources. He should reduce the scope, influence, and our reliance on the NYPD. Focus on the concurring crises that produce the conditions that foster suffering, and its inherent byproduct, violence, including gun violence.
The Adams administration has an opportunity to meet the challenge of our time. They can align themselves with a lesser-past, or use the power of Biden’s presence and office to tell a new story about NYC, and set a new standard of care and compassion in our public safety policy. The Mayor has community guidance. VOCAL-NY released the [color=inherit]
Caring & Compassionate Mayoral Forum, where Mayor Adams sparred with the leading mayoral candidates.