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Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams Tells NYC Newcomers To 'Go Back To Ohio'
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Sydney Pereira
Published Jan 21, 2020
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Erica Sherman/Brooklyn BP's Office
By
Sydney Pereira
Published Jan 21, 2020
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Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams has sparked outrage over a speech in which he urged newer residents of NYC to "go back" where they come from at a Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day event on Monday.
"Go back to Iowa, you go back to Ohio. New York City belongs to the people that were here and made New York City what it is," he said in remarks at the National Action Network's MLK Day celebration, to cheers and claps from the audience and, at times, politicians sitting behind him.
Adams, who was born in Brownsville and grew up in South Jamaica, Queens, spoke of past crises in New York, such as crack addiction and gun violence, and their devastating impact on black and brown communities. Adams argued, as many others have, that the government only began taking these problems seriously once opioid overdoses, heroin addiction, and gun violence spread to the suburban counties. But his comments on gentrification and newcomers to the city, though they received cheers at the event and are all-too familiar to readers of Gothamist's comment section, were derided on social media as exclusionary and divisive.
"You were waking up to gunshots and not alarm clocks, and you stayed. You were here before Starbucks," Adams said. "You were here before others came and decided they wanted to be a part of this city. Folks are not only high-jacking your apartments and displacing your living arrangements, they displace your conversations and said that things that are important to you are no longer important and they decide what's important and what's not important."
Bushwick caterer Jenna Hockman, who the NY Post reports is a "lifelong Brooklynite," told the tabloid that “blaming individuals instead of the system that enables developers to build these high-rises that are pricing people out. I am concerned about placing responsibility on the individuals that are moving to these neighborhoods and not the people who are making money from these individuals moving there."
Adams, a likely mayoral candidate, is accepting campaign donations from the real estate industry for his run. Previously, he was criticized when his nonprofit One Brooklyn Fund took donations from the Walentas Foundation, the family who oversee Two Trees Management—the powerful developer behind new buildings at the former Domino Sugar Factory site and a proposal for 1,000 new apartments on Williamsburg's waterfront.
Mayor Bill de Blasio spokesperson Freddi Goldstein said in a statement, "The mayor doesn’t agree with how it was said, but the borough president voiced a very real frustration. We need to improve affordability in this city to ensure New Yorkers can stay in the city they love, but New York City will always be a city for everyone.”
Asked for comment, Adams's spokesperson Jonah Allon referred us to the borough president's tweets.
In a tweet intended to clarify his remarks, Adams said, "Let me be clear: Anyone can be a New Yorker, but not everyone comes to our city with the spirit of being part of our city."
"I have a problem with that, and I'm unapologetic in asking more of our new arrivals to communities who were once waking up to gun shots and not alarm clocks," he said.
When asked what exactly he wants from newcomers, the Borough President said: "Some of it is as simple as saying 'hello' to your fellow neighbors. It's also patronizing local businesses that have been there for years. It's adopting a local school or shelter and lending a hand."
"It's breaking bread with new faces and building bonds," he said, referencing his recently announced initiative to hold dinners with people from different backgrounds to "sit down and learn from each other."
Adams's comments come weeks after he was criticized for his remarks about an LGBT-friendly senior housing complex built on New York City Housing Authority property.
At an opening celebration for Stonewall House, Adams said, "I can't celebrate a building that is not going to be inclusive," though the new building's residents are 77 percent people of color. Adams later told Gothamist he wanted a larger share of the units to be set aside for existing public housing residents; currently about 37 percent of the apartments are set aside for NYCHA residents.
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brooklyn borough president
eric adams
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Sydney Pereira
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