A year under the Eric Adams administration.
Today’s post focuses on the migrant crisis and defining mayoral power in New York City a year after Adams’ inauguration.
I am working on understanding how mayoral power works and how this power impacts every aspect of my daily life as a New Yorker. I want to name and analyze how the Eric Adams administration fails the city and connect how his actions and policies further disenfranchise Dominicans—and all Caribbean and immigrant communities. Understanding the Adams administration's role in our literal and symbolic displacements is essential.
Today's post focuses on the migrant crisis and defining mayoral power in New York City a year after Adams' inauguration.
A mayor is a city's top elected official, overseeing a city's government. They are responsible for every department that runs every aspect of a citizen's life, from education to policing, fire departments, housing, and transportation. A mayor oversees a city's budget, proposes legislation, and selects leaders for city agencies. They also have a lot of power over land use.
From a 2021 Gothamist article by Brigid Bergin:
The mayor plays a major role in the city's development when it comes to zoning and land use. That can mean proposing changes to citywide zoning regulations like de Blasio-backed Mandatory Inclusionary Housing (MIH), a change that was intended to spur affordable housing development across the city. The mayor also plays a decisive role in so-called ULURP decisions, those are instances where a developer is applying to build something that is different from what the land is currently zoned to be used for. Essentially, the mayor can leave a lasting mark on neighborhoods, coastlines, streetscapes and the people who love or hate them based on what does or does not get built.
Eric Adams became mayor of New York City on Jan. 1, 2022. His campaign rhetoric included increasing affordable housing units, improving public safety, fighting poverty, and empowering working-class residents and property owners. He often pulled from his experience as a police captain.
In his first few months as mayor, he appointed a new jails commissioner, released a 15-page report, "The Blueprint to End Gun Violence," and released his first budget in February. He made controversial hires, from top officials accused of corruption to a homophobic pastor. He was publicly critical of bail reform advocacy and approved the NYPD's removal of houseless people from trains. By March, New York City's unemployment rate was double the national average. After the discovery of arsenic in NYCHA housing, Adams questioned the validity of these claims. In November, he introduced a policy that allows police officers to involuntarily hospitalize individuals officers perceive to be experiencing mental distress in public. Asylum-seekers arriving in the city throughout 2022 still await housing.
Adams gives his first year as mayor a B+. He told The City, "Anyone who's out in the street with me and sees that people know I care for them and they care for me — you can't miss it." The mayor does a great job of publicly presenting himself as a man who cares for every New Yorker, committed to revitalizing our boroughs to pre-pandemic levels. However, he is a mayor dedicated to further militarizing the NYPD against citizens, cutting budgets from social services, and disempowering tenants while uplifting developers and gentrifiers to better NYC.
Adams uses his position as mayor to build fame, wealth, influence—power.
I also wanted to focus today on how Adams is currently handling the migration crisis in NYC, which occurs as New Yorkers are also experiencing housing and food insecurity.
On immigration, his administration claims that NYC "led the nation's response to the influx of asylum seekers through an interagency operation that managed the arrival of buses; opening approximately 70 emergency shelters and humanitarian relief centers." They add that Adams created additional services and centers "to provide comprehensive services, including access to health care, educational enrollment, and legal assistance, among other services."
Immigrant rights activists, however, say this is not true. Asylum seekers were evicted from hotels, many resorting to sleeping on the street rather than enduring the inhumane conditions at places like the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal. Earlier this month, a 26-year-old asylum seeker attempted suicide at the Brooklyn facility.
In Liberation, Salma Allam writes that U.S. imperialism creates the conditions that lead to migrants arriving in NYC and their subsequent treatment when they get here—despite being "the backbone of this country's farming industry." Allam also includes the perspective of immigrant rights organizers actively rallying against the NYPD and the city for their treatment of asylum seekers arriving in NYC. "Undocumented workers have long been the backbone of this country's farming industry, which knowingly allows corporations to exploit their labor by paying them subpar and illegal wages, while the IRS collects almost $7 billion from them in taxes every year," Allam writes. "The U.S. government is fully aware of the conditions that migrant farmworkers endure, yet does nothing to address their material needs despite years of nationwide organizing, demanding a pathway to citizenship for all documented and undocumented immigrants."
Immigrant rights organizers are calling on the city to close down detention centers around the city. Many have also called out the hypocrisy of the Adams administration, pointing to just how similar Adams, a Democrat, is to Republican politicians he publicly criticizes for their treatment of migrants. The Adams administration has even purchased bus tickets to Canada for some asylum seekers arriving in NYC.
Next month, I will write a deeper dive into his policies and actions around housing, particularly his relationship with developers. I encourage y'all to read through Adams' public statements and speeches and then compare and contrast what he says to what he does, what mainstream NYC media reports him doing, and what we see happening in the city around us.
The B+ rating he gave himself felt like a gentleman's A --he just wanted to come across as humble. Meanwhile the city is so much worse off with him. Criminalizing homelessness, putting so many police on the subway, sending migrants in the atrocious brooklyn facility (& then pulling a media stunt by sleeping there to prove that the facilities are adequate!!) is all so despicable. Thanks for diving into this topic