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
you also have to understand that mamdani is running in a country where the overton window is far right enough to make socdems seem like leftists. to us it’s obvious that the police is a racist institution with a racist history, but most people aren’t involved in politics enough to understand where this stance comes from. you can’t afford to be inflammatory as a leftist in america. i hate the fact that mamdani’s done this because looking at his campaign and policies gave me a bit of hope, but when you think about it, it makes sense. a candidate cannot win in a vacuum. his only “allies” are two centrists and a war criminal. gotta work with what you have, y’know?
I think most New Yorkers can also see this pretty easily. The NYPD is notorious worldwide. All polling shows that he was incredibly popular before walking back anything, this is objectively an unforced error.
but it’s one of those opinions that you’ve gotta keep on the down low because “not all cops” and “one bad apple” or something. i don’t disagree with you, but just saying.
I just think there’s ways to downplay this without a complete pivot followed by an unqualified apology, even if you accept the premise that it needed to be downplayed (which I mostly disagree with).
i agree with that, there were definitely ways of reframing what he said to both soothe the moderates and stand his ground.
Yeah, I saw your other comment in the thread too and I think you’re right that he’s basically a microcosm of the limited potential of electoralism as a strategy.
But his saying this was already publicized well before the primary, where he didn’t apologize for it and then won.
I mean, that’s not inherently surprising, in itself. A primary is limited to members of the party which is why most politicians lean towards their base during it and then track back to the center in the general because they need more votes than just their own party.
Not saying that that strategy is more successful in NYC or anything (I do agree with most here that he could probably (easily) win without trying to get out the moderate vote) but just that winning in the primary isn’t necessarily evidence of anything.
This is oriented around Democrat conventional wisdom, but the more emphatic progressives tend to take a very different approach and focus on getting votes from people who wouldn’t vote otherwise due to being disaffected, at least to some degree (which often compounds with factors like poverty making voting harder if you’re stuck in an area where you’d need to wait in line for hours).
all we can really do is speculate. there’s a lot happening behind the scenes, but this was a major blunder regardless.
can confirm
holy hell
Absolutely no one, including other pigs and even the NYPD itself, thinks the NYPD is not racist.
“Yeah, I’m racist. You gonna do something about it, n-word lover?” - NYPD