By Colin Benjamin
Photos: YouTube Screenshots
New York’s greedy billionaires are scrambling scared by the prospect of a Zohran Mamdani mayoralty.
After all, how horrifying the prospect of calling for the wealthy to pay their fair share of taxes toward bettering the social welfare of the America they claim to love? Theirs is a me-me circle that doesn’t give a damn about the masses of poor peon people. Therefore, most of these billionaires will line up in opposition to Mamdani’s policies of economic fairness for all.
This is why it should surprise no one that conservative hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman has just pledge his support to try to reelect austerity Mayor Eric Adams.
In announcing his support for Adams, Ackman said “Mayor Adams is ready to go to battle, guns blazing with enormous energy and clarity on why Mamdani and his socialist/communist (‘We must seize the means of production’) and anti-NYPD policies would be catastrophic for NYC.” Ackman also claimed that “Adams is a great campaigner who can lead the grassroots effort needed to defeat Mamdani, and as mayor, he has a great platform to tell his story.”
First, let’s examine Ackman’s laughable language about “the grassroots effort needed to defeat Mamdani.”
What kind of “grassroots effort” is Ackman talking about? A “grassroots effort” of billionaires? Isn’t he really signaling that he expects Adams to bargain his Black skin in attempting to fool Blacks and Latinos, particularly, and other minorities, to stop Mamdani from pursuing his affordability agenda for New York City?
Let’s also remember this: Bill Ackman is the man who called for the firing of Harvard University’s first Black president, Claudine Gay. Ackman was unhappy about the protests taking place at his alma mater, Harvard, that were denouncing the genocide in Gaza. So, we have no First Amendment right to principled criticism of Israel without being falsely labelled anti-Semitic? What about the Jewish protesters are they just “self-hating Jews?”
For those seeking to smear Mamdani as anti-Semitic, it should be noted that several Jewish politicians are supporting Mamdani including Senator Bernie Sanders, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, Congressman Jerry Nadler and New York City Assemblymember Micah Lasher.
Ackman also complained against Harvard’s “efforts to increase diversity” and whined about the fictional “racism against white people.”
Ackman is one of the main proponents fighting against DEI. Ackman has stated that “DEI is racist because reverse racism is racism” and “Racism against white people has become considered acceptable by many.”
Given all this, the question for us here is: why is Ackman backing Adams?
For one thing, Adams was not Ackman’s original choice. Ackman initially backed former Governor Andrew Cuomo. But Cuomo was roundly routed by Mamdani, so now Ackman apparently believes he has no choice but to back his Black DEI choice for mayor: Eric Adams.
The irony.
Black and Latino New Yorkers should pay close attention here. Ackman knows Adams will not pursue necessary economic policies that will tax the rich fairly to make New York City affordable for all.
Adams has pushed damaging austerity policies ever since he entered Gracie Mansion. Moreover, Adams did so after a once-in-a-lifetime-pandemic where the opposite economic approach should have been taken to get New Yorkers back on their feet. Adams also never pressed corporate America to live up to the promises they made after the George Floyd protests—to address economic inequality and institutional racism. The only thing Adams believes in is funding the NYPD.
And Adams is about to be bankrolled by one of the main billionaires who is actively attacking DEI initiatives that help Black Americans.
Now, in Ackman’s case, besides being just another avaricious billionaire, he is no doubt incensed that Zohran Mamdani has taken a principled stance against the mass murder of Palestinians.
Ackman was able to use his billionaire power to remove Claudine Gay and he now wants to use Adams to vanquish Mamdani. People, like Bill Ackman, are truly despicable because they only see humanity in themselves. Does Ackman, and the whole lot of hollow hypocrites howling anti-Semitism, think Israeli lives are any more precious than the Palestinian babies who are being blown away by bullets and buried under bombs, as we speak?
Unfortunately, these grotesque people clearly do think that.
What they are telling us, with the genocide in Gaza, and their opposition to Assemblyman Mamdani’s mayoral platform policies, is that only the lives of the rich matter to them. And most of our politicians, both Republicans and Democrats, are bought-and-paid- for, so we get a lot of unprincipled bloviating bullshit.
Eric Adams is no different, and ever since Trump “helped him out a little bit” with his “problem,” Adams has been thoroughly compromised. That “problem” being the federal charges Adams faced from the Department of Justice.
It is clear now that Eric Adams is the Black skin hope of billionaires like Bill Ackman and Donald Trump. Adams has been an absolute disgrace and has done little for the Black and Latino New Yorkers who are largely responsible for him becoming mayor. After Mamdani’s primary win he called Mamdani a “snake-oil salesman” because Mamdani promised to fight for affordability for all. That statement should tell us that Adams will never fight for the economic change that most New Yorkers clearly voted for last week.
And that is why average economically struggling New Yorkers, particularly Blacks and Latinos, should reject Bill Ackman’s DEI pick for mayor: Eric Adams.
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