Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist who won the mayoral primary, said the department was racist and homophobic in a social media post.
its true tho
Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City, said on Thursday that he intended to apologize for comments he made in 2020 calling the New York Police Department “racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety.”
He said that the remarks, which he wrote in June 2020 in a social media post in support of the defund the police movement, were made after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis a month earlier.
The comments were made “at the height of frustration,” he said in an interview with The New York Times, and were not reflective of his current campaign or “my view of public safety and the fact that police will be critical partners in delivering public safety.”
Mr. Mamdani’s post from 2020 has been recirculated by his political opponents, who have used his previous criticism of the police to portray him as weak on issues of public safety. Mr. Mamdani, a New York State assemblyman, is far ahead of his three rivals, who include Mayor Eric Adams, a former police captain who has consistently placed fourth in recent polling.
When he was asked if he should apologize to the city’s police officers, he paused noticeably before answering. He then went on to explain how his views had changed. After he was asked again if he owed officers an apology, he said, “Yes.”
Mr. Mamdani’s statements on Thursday came amid recent attempts to reach out to the police rank-and-file, an effort to address one of his biggest political vulnerabilities. His past criticism of the police has fed the skepticism and even hostility expressed by many police officers, who are wary of the changes he plans to make to the department.
dude you have like a 20 points lead, stop capitulating
Fun Historical Fact
Louis Blanc was a popular French Socialist who advocated for the creation of State-run Stores & Businesses to benefit the Working Class
He would go on to condemn the Paris Commune for being too Radical, just before the Army violently purged the City's Working Class
sips tea
Come get em libs, y’all have been arguing with me about this guy for months
I'll take my
. I wanted to believe. My heart has been hardened.
Welcome comrade.
Jokes aside, there’s nothing wrong with being an optimist. We all want a better world, and in the belly of the beast even a single slit of light seems like something to hold on to. But we need a revolutionary, working class optimism, and the sooner people realise everything the Democratic Party touches turns to reactionary shit, the better.
he's still promising objectively good things like rent control and cheaper groceries and is therefore objectively better than every other democrat. it's not falling for it if you don't expect outlandish things.
if anyone thought he was the revolution they made that up themselves; holding him to the standard of a party cadre was always and continues to be asinine.
Is caving to this shit not indicative of a tendency which will likely continue to include the policies you want? "Of course the grocery store owners aren't leaching off of the people of New York, I was just talking to the daughter of a store owner yesterday about how fearful she it for their livelihoods. Of course we won't replace them with state-run grocery stores. We will just incentivize them to lower grocery costs"
I'm not saying that's going to happen, but I'm in no way convinced by his recent moves that he has any strategy for pulling through. The pressure he will get for those is immensely, astonishingly stronger than for "NYPD is racist". There's an entire economic system he'll be directly up against.
If the claim is that this is strategic to reach that end, then either I am useless at understanding the argument or it makes no damn sense because I sure can't figure out how this helps the other.
no i don't think this is strategic unless it's directly in exchange for something from the party or the strategy is "please don't assassinate me pigs".
i think the difference between this and reneging on a policy is that the policies are actually material, i don't care nearly as much about the politicking as i do about non-pig first responders getting funded and the police taking a cut (i.e. no increase is a cut because of inflation). He campaigned on endorsing the liberal myths about what cops are supposed to be "for", so this apology is dumb if there isn't a gun to his head but it doesn't indicate a policy change.
and to be clear i think this and the previous capitulation to racism are bad moves. it's also been like six years since a politician promised good things. democrats and DSA entryists should at least be forced to lie to people instead of doing what they've been doing for 10+ years other than bernie and a couple congresswomen.
A lot of people clearly do though, because they keep insisting that he's not conceding anything important, actually. Your post is correct, but I'm not sure it reflects what some people here think of him.
Well that's good, he'd never break a promise lol
i expect politicians to break promises. things are so far gone that they usually don't even bother to make them any more. not for good stuff anyway, they can step up to the gallows with their "most lethal military" and other fascist hits.
Not sure where you're getting this from, biden ran on the promise to CURE CANCER
do you think anyone took that seriously?
based on the whack-ass reality we live in yeah I do think a lot of liberals who heard that believed him
people are fuckin stupid as hell! Either way tho I was arguing about whether promises are made not if people believed the promises
i think there's a meaningful difference between a credible and non-credible promises. rent control is credible, municipal grocery stores are credible, freezing the pig budget is in the middle, arresting bibi is mostly not credible, "we're gonna cure cancer" is obvious bullshit.
I don't agree with this categorization, but I also don't care enough to argue further
Nah, I think we got one more in us. One more election where we all lib out.