Eric Adams vs. Humanity
Just before Thanksgiving, NYC Mayor Eric Adams announced extensive and devastating cuts to public programs across the city. These cuts impact everything from police and firefighters to schools and libraries, to programs like city-wide composting meant to address public health and climate change. According to Adams, these cuts are a necessary response to an ongoing financial crisis in NYC that stems from slowing tax revenue, sunsetting pandemic aid, and the ongoing migrant crisis. The cuts inspired widespread outrage. Opponents accused Mayor Adams of scapegoating migrants, resorting to an ax rather than a scalpel to address budget challenges, and refusing to find other ways to raise revenue or address inefficiencies. But even more broadly, these cuts highlight a glaring lack of compassion and creativity in our politics amongst cascading and inextricably linked crises.
First, it’s hard not to feel like Mayor Adams is trying to turn New Yorkers against their new neighbors amidst already rising tensions. The programs facing extensive cuts are the ones we see in our everyday lives. Libraries facing budget shortfalls are ending Sunday service, and may be forced to end weekend service entirely, in addition to cutting programming and letting building maintenance fall by the wayside. When are working parents supposed to take their kids to the libraries if they are closed on weekends? Libraries are one of the few public spaces left that don’t cost money, that offer enrichment and support programs to everyone regardless of income. Where are people supposed to go if libraries are closed all the time? Because of the influx of migrants coming to New York, schools have seen an increase in enrollment for the first time in years, and yet budget cuts are forcing them to scale back positions to help new arrivals navigate the school system as well as other programs.
Meanwhile, the Adams administration relies on costly for-profit companies to run shelters for newly arrived migrants with little oversight, and it’s not like these for-profit companies had sterling reputations to begin with. Of course, Mayor Adams has not seen to address these inefficiencies, or to find more sustainable solutions for our budgetary problems. Instead, he cuts programs that will harm vulnerable and marginalized New Yorkers most, while blaming people fleeing extreme poverty, violence, and political persecution, and who have arrived without resources to find an immigration system at best ill-equipped to help them and at worst actively designed to make their lives more difficult. And after years of protesting the heinous and inhumane immigration policies of the Trump administration, Americans are increasingly turning towards myopic immigration stances.
Second, while increased taxes on the super-wealthy would likely increase revenue, those same super-wealthy New Yorkers seem increasingly unwilling to pay those taxes. In fact, per The City, “In all, about 10% of New York City residents who had been millionaires in 2020 left the city that year, tax data shows.” As the gap between the super wealthy and the rest of us grows, the wealthy seem less and less interested in closing it.
So here we are, a city of millions. A city symbolic of the American dream in more ways than one - looming large as a place where anyone can dream big, can make a new life for themselves, can start over, and also a place where those dreams meet a nearly impossible reality. Our city’s leadership, rather than taking responsibility, showing accountability, or bringing us together, turns us against each other. When faced with budget shortfalls, Adams takes a scythe to the programs we rely on most, the programs that help us build a community out of a city that is notoriously unforgiving, the programs that give us space to change our lives and realize the dreams that brought us here in the first place.
Perhaps that’s not so surprising. Mayor Adams is under federal investigation for campaign finance violations, an investigation that involved an FBI raid. He’s been sued for committing sexual assault when he was police captain. He doesn’t believe in the separation of church and state - in fact he claimed that “When we took prayers out of schools, guns came into schools.” He has a tendency of appointing people with anti-queer views and his administration suspended the city’s right to shelter policy which has been in place for decades.
But of course this is bigger than Eric Adams, and of course it’s bigger than New York City. When faced with a crisis, we always have more options when we think. Our immigration system is not just a question of building a wall or not, letting people in or not. How do we treat people when they get here? What resources will help them succeed and build a life and a community? When faced with a budget crisis, is our only option huge across the board cuts? What kind of city could we have if we cared for each other?
And what kind of country could we have, what kind of world? With all of the brilliant minds we have in science and technology, in foreign policy and government, who could we be if we came together to solve problems? I think about this in the context of our city budget, in the huge costs we face if we abandon everyone to fend for themselves, instead of building community through our libraries and our schools. But I also think about it in terms of our foreign policy. Are sanctions that hurt everyday people more than the governments they are intended to punish the only way we can think to effect change? In Palestine, millions of people who have lived for generations in what amounts to an open air prison have no water, no food, no fuel as they face indiscriminate bombing and the wholesale destruction of their homes. Is that the only response we can envision to a terrorist attack?
On our block, in our city, in our country, in the world, we are faced again and again with the same choices. Will we hoard our wealth? Will we hurt each other to save ourselves? Or will we fight for each other?