By Gary Tilzer
The lion of NYC racial discrimination protests, Rev Al Sharpton (plus a checkered past), and a new mayor who called the leadership of NYPD racists in the 1990’s, when many of today’s elected progressives were in grade school, now find themselves as the city’s establishment. Both early civil rights leaders are not only ignored by Albany’s elected leaders, but also by a changing culture that they and many long-time New Yorkers do not understand. The mayor was hit by a train when he went to Albany to seek support for his common sense bail reform plan that the mentally ill and double-digit repeat offenders, and even the Trader Joe’s Hamburglar, should not be automatically released by judges limited by the new bail law to function as clerks. Sharpton who had a watermelon thrown at him as he marched in Howard Beach in 1991, to protest the beating of 17-year-old Alfred Jermaine Ewell by a white mob, is now accused of policies that support “mass incarceration,” by a new cultural leader because he wants robbing, stealing, and shooting to stop. Adams, who formed the organization “100 Black Men” in 1995 to battle racism in the NYPD, to protect minority youth that cops abused in that era, now sees his crime-fighting bail reform plan to protect his city. blocked by Albany.
Nikole Hannah-Jones the Left-Wing NY Times creator of the controversial 1619 Project reprimanded Sharpton for his comments on “Morning Joe” that stated: “you cannot have a culture where people are just, at random, robbing and stealing. In fairness to Eric, he has only been mayor a few weeks, but even as a fan of him: Eric, they’re locking up my toothpaste.” Hannah-Jones tweeted her answer to Sharpton: “This drumbeat for continued mass incarceration is really horrific to watch.”
Public safety has now gotten entangled with the woke culture. The only ones who can take on these activists, left-wingers, and quislings in Albany behind this destructive culture to New Yorkers safety are two guys who grew up on the streets of the City in a lost era when it was really “our streets” and neighborhoods, Sharpton, and Adams. Taking on this culture will be hard and messy in this crazy era of McCarthyism like attacks and fears, just ask Dave Chappelle. The old two NYC civil rights warrior activists must find a way to do battle again and speak for the silent majority of the city’s crime victims who are not covered in the media:
NY Times: “While all New Yorkers are affected by rising crime, the brunt of the increase is borne by Black New Yorkers. In 2020, Black New Yorkers, who comprise about 24 percent of the city’s population, were the victims in 65 percent of murders and 74 percent of shootings. They were also the largest racial demographic among victims of felony assault and rape.”
Albany is About the Breakdown of the Ability to Compromise for Public Safety Between Leaders Seeking to Increase Civil Rights
Before his first zoom meeting with Albany legislative leaders, Mayor Adams was told his crime-fighting bail reforms were a non-starter. Assembly member Latrice Walker accused Adams of “adopting the rhetoric” of people who say that “racially insinuated criminal justice reform in our country is harming our city.”
At several points on the zoom call, the mayor held up placards to illustrate his argument, including one saying that last year, 10 percent of people under 18 who were arrested by the New York Police Department had a gun and that “six years ago, that was only 1 percent.” Adams is also asking for changes to state law so that prosecutors can try some teenagers as adults in cases involving firearms and judges can have more discretion to consider “dangerousness” when setting bail. In the 1920’s gangsters only carried guns when they were ready to make a hit, the Sullivan Law passed in 1911 sent them to jail for at least a year if they were caught with a gun. Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez actually connects the dots, noting that the state’s bail-reform law has led to “80 to 90%” of gun-possession perps going free. Gonzalez is calling for the Legislature to give judges more discretion.
Analysis: Albany Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and State Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins only fear challengers to their power positions from the growing number of left-wing legislators. Their moderate legislative members who keep them leaders, who see the need for bail reform, are afraid to vote for it, because they have been warned that the growing left-wing would challenge their reelection.
The late great journalist Jimmy Breslin who was connected to every beat of NYC used to say in the 1970s, that race affects every issue, government decision, and political conflict in the city. With the success in electing Afro-Americans into NY’s political leadership, race has been replaced by left-wing woke culture, including the movement’s power at the polls. Sharpton and Mayor Adams who grew up during the city’s fiscal and crime crisis understand that ideological stands of the city’s left wing are not enough to keep the city’s poor and minorities safe and improve their economic conditions.
Bill Bratton@ Twitter CommissBratton Mayor Eric Adams’ “Impossible Dream Trying to convince the Woke legislators in Albany to reform the laws that are destroying more minority lives than they are saving. I admire his persistence and passion in the face of so much resistance.”
Crime Has Destroyed NYC’s Economy in the Pasted Historically Hitting the Minority Community Hardest in the Loss of Jobs and Cuts in Govt Service
Both Sharpton and Adams through their life experiences witnessed that as crime went down, tourism, jobs, and business opportunities grew for the city’s forgotten in Bed Stuy and other inner-city neighborhoods. They witnessed empty streets during the day that used to be gang hangouts when the city’s economy was bad. The mayor has spoken often that tourism and office workers will not come back until crime comes down, understanding that each time a crime video plays on cable news all over the world, less tourists will come to the city. A video which has been on the news hundreds of times of a Thai model Jirajariywetch being attacked and dragged on the 34th street subway station by Kevin Douglas, who has been arrested 44 times for crimes dating back to 1997.
Sharpton’s complaint about locked up toothpaste came about because of a video of the hamburglar stealing ten steaks from Trader Joe’s. Adams understands that 40% of the city’s hotel workers are still out of work, many hotels still closed, in an industry that used to contribute 15% of the city’s economy and provided tens of thousands of jobs to the city’s Black and Hispanic residents. Adams is frustrated and angry that if he cannot get the bail reform bill to pass in Albany after the federal stimulus money runs out to balance his budget, he will be blamed for city worker laid-offs and service cuts.
Latrice Walker, an Assembly Democrat from Brooklyn was born 10 years after the Beame administration was bailed out by the federal government to prevent the city from going broke. The Bed Stuy Assembly member who was one of the authors of the 2019 changes to the state’s bail laws, said before the mayor arrived in Albany to lobby for his bail reform plan “we are gonna hold the line, on criminal justice (bail) reforms enacted in 2019.”
Today, all the players in the fight for both public safety and prison reform have teams of public relations experts who watch their words to make sure they are not blamed for the city’s crime crisis. Even the media and public pressure on DA Bragg decreased after he hired public relations expert Risa Heller. Public relations experts have become an Orwellian-fueled oxymoron in a world of broken newspapers where inexperienced reporters think stenography is journalism. Unfortunately, the bail reform murders keep happening, while no lawmaker or prosecutor is held responsible by the media.
Assamad Nash, the accused homeless murderer of 35-year-old Christina Yuna Lee, who was found stabbed 40 times in her bathtub; his mental health is currently being examined on the 19th floor of Bellevue Hospital:
NY Times: “In January, Nash was charged with criminal mischief and unlawful escape; the police said he was disabling MetroCard machines at several subway stations and tried to escape from a police van after his arrest. The judge handling the case could have set bail on the escape charge, but prosecutors did not request it and Mr. Nash was released under supervision, according to court records. It is not clear whether the request for bail would have been granted if the prosecutors had asked for it.”
The Times did not make it clear that Nash has three open cases pending, has spent his life in and out of court with judges (at least 12) who could do nothing to stop him, not even commit him to a mental health institution before he killed Christina. The question that New Yorkers have to ask themselves is who else will be murdered. Which New Yorker will have to die before Albany gives judges the power to protect us?
Sal Albanese Twitter @SalAlbaneseNYC This brutal murder is another example of the terrible political leadership we have. Our political system continues to produce inept & pandering career pols whose main goal is to remain in cushy political posts.
Even the Governor’s Race is Being Controlled by the Growing Left-Wing Power Operators and Has Implications for Bail Reform
Gov. Kathy Hochul is running again against left-winger public advocate Jumaane Williams who lost to her for Lt. Governor in 2018 by less than 6% of the vote. The governor’s political handlers are afraid agreeing to Mayor Adams bail reform before the primary will not only strengthen Public Advocate William challenge, but it also raises the possibility of her losing in a three-way split, with moderate Congressman Tom Suozzi is also running against her, and who has already pledged to fire DA Bragg. Meanwhile, the NY Post reports, Gov. Hochul said the bail reform law likely wouldn’t be addressed until after the March 31 budget deadline.
How Did the City’s Left-Wing Gain Power to Control Government and Politics So Quickly?
The Founding Fathers of the city’s left-wing empowerment are the former mayor of NYC and his fellow grifter partner the Working Families Party (WFP). de Blasio and the WFP used illegal campaign tactics to empower the left-wing while gentrifying the city’s minority neighborhoods which increased their voting clout.
The WFP and de Blasio both got away with multiple state and federal investigations that somehow all got dropped, including Pay to Play with the PAC Campaign for One NY, ACORN, WFP’s Data and Fields, and NYCLASS money laundering that destroyed his mayoral challenger Christine Quinn’s campaign in 2013. de Blasio used pay to play to build a shadow government lobbying network that he called his “Agents of the City,” that now controls City Hall, Albany, and NY’s politics. His main lobbyists Berlin Rosen (Agent of the City) and campaign consultant made millions off of gentrification developers who wanted to do business with the city. The hypocrisy that is never applied to socialist candidates like Brad Lander, who used Berlin Rosen to run all his campaigns, is that the more minorities that are moved out by gentrification lobbyists campaign consultants, the more votes Lander and his fellow socialist got at the polls in 2021.
The Mayor Used His Office to Increase Gentrification in Minority Neighborhoods Replacing Long-Time Black Residents with Out-of-Town White University-Trained Progressives
de Blasio and his co-conspirators with the WFP used illegal tactics to win campaigns, built a lobbyist pay to play shadow government-funded by developers’ money, and organized a new left-wing Tammany machine to win campaigns. The secret of this new machine is that woke progressive elected officials like Brad Lander, Jumaane Williams and de Blasio who campaigned on promises to help the poor and minorities, political careers did better by building less affordable housing for neighborhood residents. The billions they promised for low rent housing actually went to gentrifying developers to build high rent apartment buildings that attracted gentrifying younger tenants or owners from out-of-town, who vote for progressive ideological candidates, unconnected to the community they just moved into.
When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) won her upset victory over Democrat Rep. Joe Crowley, it was without the WFP endorsement. WFP, the so-called party of progressives, backed her opponent Queens Boss Congressman Crowley. Many of the political pundits at the time of her victory assumed that her victory was entirely due to demographic changes in the district that were unfriendly to a white congressman. But a post-election survey of Ocasio-Cortez’s race suggested that this was not the case: Her upset was due in large part to high voter turnout in gentrified neighborhoods in Queens.
In the 2021 municipal elections AOC’s endorsements in Brooklyn turned out to be more than an endorsement. It can now officially be labeled a political machine that not only propelled Brad Lander in his race for City Comptroller and Antonio Reynoso win as Brooklyn Borough President, but it also helped at least eight Brooklyn city council candidates win in Brooklyn.
Of course, it was not only AOC that helped elect these left-wing candidates in Brooklyn and other NYC races. It was a combination of a directorate of interlocking progressive groups and PACs, including AOC’s Courage to Change, WFP, and Democratic Socialist of America, which work remarkably well together. These left-Wing Groups, with interconnected lobbyists and PACs, help acquire extra money and resources for their chosen progressive candidates, even beating a forty-year incumbent like Joe Lentol.
A Crime Victims Movement “A People’s Revolt” is Needed in NYC to Cancel the Political Power of the Left-Wing to Change the Bail Law
We Are as Mad as Hell and We Are Not Going to Take it Anymore” – Paddy Chayefsky, Network
In the last few weeks, victim memorial protests have begun to be organized to honor and protest the murders of crime victims like 40-year-old Michelle Go, 19-year-old Kristal Bayron Nieves, and 35-year-old Christina Yuna Lee all murdered by perps who should have been stopped on their numerous visits to criminal court.
These memorial rallies for Michelle, Kristal and Yuna were a good first step. The next step needs the victimization groups to target the Albany legislators who are blocking Adams’ bail reforms. In addition to protests in Albany with the families and friends of the victim, anti-crime activists after each shooting or murder in an Assembly or Senate districts of a member blocking bail reform, should organize protests in front of that elected official office. In Assembly member Walker’s 55th district a co-sponsor of the 2019 bail reform law at least two-gun crimes happened this week: 1) 40 y/o male was shot multiple times in the chest at 1160 Willmohr St. and pronounced deceased at Brookdale Hospital. Second male victim was shot multiple times to the leg and arm and is in stable condition. 2) NYPD 77th Precinct Twitter @NYPD77Pct A known gang member, out on bail for a previous gun charge, was arrested again last night with this loaded firearm.
New Yorkers must end this self-inflicted crime wave themselves to make sure there are no more Christinas. Before she was murdered Christina created an online support group for Asians after the Atlanta spa shooting that killed six Asian women. The NY Asian community must continue Christina’s online support network to use as an organizing tool to pressure Albany to change the bail law. Victim activists, elected officials, candidates for office, Sharpton and Mayor Adams can make New York, New York again by pressuring Albany to act on Christina’s last words, “Help Me.”
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