Transcript: Mayor Adams Calls in for Live Interview on "The Beat 139" Podcast

Vernon “Donveto” Boisseau: What's up? What's up? 

Kareem “Doc” Louallen: What's good, people? How y'all doing? Happy Wednesday. 

Boisseau: Happy Wednesday. Today's a great day. We got the mayor of New York City, Mr. Mayor Eric Adams is about to come on. He's a great mayor. I really stand by him 100 percent. I voted for him and everything. I'm honored and happy that he's coming on this evening. 

Louallen: Definitely, for sure. This is a big moment for us. You know it's big. I threw on the Tupac shirt.

Boisseau: We had to clean it up for the mayor. You know what I'm saying? Yes, we did. We had to clean it up, man, and show some respect to the mayor of New York City, Eric Adams. We're going to have a great interview with him this evening, as soon as he comes on.

Louallen: Let me introduce myself. Welcome to the Doc. Shake the block.

Boisseau: My name is Donveto, voice for the peoples. We out of Harlem, but we represent all communities. Like I said, Mayor Eric Adams is about to come on the show. We're going to have a great interview with him this evening. As soon as he comes on, I know a lot of y'all have been waiting. We've been getting a lot of emails, a lot of text messages, looking forward to hearing the mayor on our show, The Beat 139. Without further ado, we got the mayor of New York City coming on right now, Mayor Eric Adams. Hey!

Mayor Eric Adams: Good to see you, brothers, man. I'm sorry, I'm in the car moving around, going from one location to the next. Really good to see you. You got my seed in the studio with you, doing his own thing, man. A lot of times people see our sons, they have to go based on what their parents did. Jordan is paving his own way, I told him ever since he was a child, he was my hero. He just continued to inspire me every day. It's really good to be on with you. You brothers are OGs.

Louallen: Yes, we definitely appreciate that. He's a good dude. Like you say, he's paving his own way. He's doing his own thing. He's about to have some things he's got lined up. We’d like to go from the beginning before we jump to the questions, right, to get to know you. Where are you from? How did you grow up?

Mayor Adams: I'm so glad you did that. Because people look at, where I am now, being the first Black borough president, being a state senator, being the second Black mayor. That's my glory, man. That's not my story. Right? People tend to forget that all of us have, we all have a story. Particularly in the instant social media generation. There are folks who step to me and they don't even realize what the history was. 

I was born in Brownsville but mom moved us out to South Jamaica, Queens in this little small starter house. She gave us everything she can. She raised the six of us, for the most part, on her own. I didn't realize, growing up in school, I went to PS 140 school. Brothers, I would walk in the classroom. I started my day praying, hoping that they would never have me read. Because the other students would mimic me and laugh. They would leave on the back of my chair, the dumb student when you walk in the classroom. You know how brutal that is, man. When you're being teased in that manner. 

It wasn't until I got into college that I realized I was dyslexic. From being that D student to going to being on the Dean's list showed that if you give people the resources you need, they'd be able to go far. I had to figure out on my own how to learn by being dyslexic with a learning disability. Went to school at night. And struggled like everyone else. Running numbers, doing all sorts of mischief. My brother and I got arrested when we were 15. The police beat us down. From that day on, I was just on a mission. 

Reverend Herbert Daughtry, a lot of people know this name, but Clifford Glover was shot in South Jamaica, Queens. Reverend Daughtry was the first person I see to stand up to fight against police abuse. Later we saw what he did with Arthur Miller. That just got me into the role of being inside the movement. I was with an organization that he headed called the National Black United Front. He was the one that told me, I wanted to go into computers, but he was the one that told me and a couple of other brothers that, listen, y'all got to go in the Police Department and fight from within. I thought he was out of his mind. I was like, what? 

Little did I know his wisdom. Because the demon was in me. I was just so angry. Every time I saw a police vehicle, I relived that beating. Every time I saw a police show on TV, I relived that beating. He knew, in order to get the demon out of you, you got to go in. We went in, started 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, and just fought for safe justice and safety, because they both go together. From that, people knew me, and that is how I got into government and moved to become the state senator, the borough president, and now the mayor of the City of New York.

Boisseau: That's a powerful story. May I ask you, what did they arrest you for? 

Mayor Adams: For burglary. My brother and I used to take care of this prostitute who used to go out and be a go-go dancer and a prostitute. She broke her leg, and when she had a broken leg, she couldn't go out and prostitute anymore. We were taking care of her, going out, doing our little street hustles, all types of hustles. 

When she got her leg healed, she basically said, screw y'all, later for y'all. We broke into her apartment, and the next day from school, the detectives came and picked us up and locked us both up for the burglary. You know what's interesting? I was 15 at the time. I went to Spofford. My brother went down to Queens Central Booking. After, they sent us out to go to see our counselor. The counselor sat down with both of us. She told my brother to come back next week for a follow-up counseling service. She looked at me, and she says, don't even bother coming back. In her mind, she said, you're just incorrigible, you're just angry. Little did she didn't know I was angry because I couldn't figure out why the hell I couldn't read, man. Imagine thinking that you're dumb every day. All that anger, instead of her nurturing me, she basically said, listen, don't even bother coming back. I thought about that throughout that entire walk home.

Louallen: You and your brother seem close. Y'all look alike. You said six of y'all. Y'all two that's, hung out together?

Mayor Adams: Yes, Bernard is my youngest brother. My oldest brother is Conrad, and he's down in Carolina, he moves around. He could be in Alabama right now. I'm not sure of his exact location. I still feel what happened to us in the precinct has impacted him. 

What was interesting, Conrad was the darkest of our family. We got to go back 40, 50 years. It was a different… People were very race conscious back then. Can you imagine the entire family being of my same complexion, and he was extremely dark. He went through a lot of trauma that everybody said, that's not your real brother, that's not your brother, is he adopted? Growing up, man, people can be cruel, man. I think it impacted him and really shaped who he was. He’s a beautiful brother. That trauma as a child, man, that trauma we deal with as a child, that shit follows us throughout our entire life, man. 

Boisseau: Yes, it does. 

Mayor Adams: Mom, the best story that defines mom, when we were on Gates Avenue, 1218 Gates Avenue growing up, people often said, we would go from house to house to house and stay with relatives. There was no permanency to our housing. But mom was so determined, man. She was just such a strong woman. She transitioned a few years ago while I was campaigning. She would iron… One day we were up at, in a tenement. We had a four-story tenement building where we lived in. 

We would play spades every week and mom said, listen, my children are not growing up here. I'm moving to a house in Queens. I'm going to buy my children a house in Queens. The whole room was silent. Then all of a sudden everybody burst out laughing. They were like, Queens, are you out of your mind? This is it. 

The thought back then that you were going to move out of Brownsville or out of Bushwick, it was like, man, listen, hang that up. Mom, I remember crying that day. Mommy told me, she dried my eyes with her, she had this long house gown. She said, baby, don't worry, we're going to move to Queens. She ironed thousands of shirts and pillowcases and pants and slacks. My job was to take the iron off the stove and test it by licking my finger to see if it wasn't too hot. Because if she scorched the shirt, that was a whole month of ironing. 

About two to three years later, she saved up enough money to move us to Queens. She went to the bank to do her closing. When she walked inside the bank — because she used to clean this lawyer's house out in Queens, that's how she knew about Queens — when she walked into the bank to do the closing, they said, what are you doing here, Dorothy? The lawyer was there that she cleaned his house. She says, this is my house. I'm the person that bought this house. He didn't even realize when he saw her name on the paper. He did the closing. 

Then when mommy finished the closing, she went to his house and he cleaned up. He told his wife, Dorothy bought a house today. When mommy finished cleaning up, he fired her. He said, who do you think you are, buying a house? She said, baby, I went to the train station, and I just waited until the trains came in, and I just yelled and I screamed, I cried. Then I dried my eyes and I said, I have this house. I got six children. I have to figure out a way to keep this house for my children. 

She never, never gave up. We still have that house. I moved her out of that house before she died, years before she passed away, and I rebuilt it for her. She was like, baby, every day I feel like I'm in a hotel, I always wanted this house to be this way. Now I see how ballplayers feel when they buy their mothers a house or people who are out there doing all sorts of things to get their mothers a house. That mother's love is real, and there was a real dedication. Whenever I was trying to struggle academically, she would just say, baby, you got this. Don't worry about it. I'll never forget her. I am who I am because she was who she was.

Boisseau: The mom, she kept that…. Well you were a child anyway. She kept that love. That love is everything. You know what I'm saying? Let me ask you a question. You moved from Brownsville to Queens, Jamaica, Queens. Those are [inaudible] the two rough neighborhoods. 

Mayor Adams: Right. there you go. Now I know you an OG. 

Boisseau: Brownsville and Jamaica, Queens, some things was happening around the time. How did you survive through that? 

Mayor Adams: Fat Cat Nichols was out there. Pretty Tony was out there. They had some of the biggest drug lords out there. Cats used to drive around the projects in Rolls Royces. It was about just keeping low, keeping low. 

I was not of the caliber to run with them. I'm not even going to act like I was, man. Those cats was cold. They were cold-blooded, They did that Louallenumentary, The Supreme, and we talked about some of those issues. I was part of the Seven Crowns at that time. But you know what? You just kept low. 

Louallen: It takes a lot of discipline. You said you've seen it, and for you to go the other way. Because back then it was a lot of money, and you right there, you've seen it. For you not to go that path, it takes a lot of discipline.

Mayor Adams: No, it does. It does. I look back, man, there by the grace of God. That's why I don't look down on anyone who's hustling or who has made mistakes. That's why I went to… I went to Rikers Island last month around Easter, Good Friday to be exact, to get baptized with other inmates that were on Rikers Island. I could have gone to any church I wanted to. I wanted to get re-baptized with these brothers on Rikers Island, sitting next to them in the pew, going through the whole ceremony. Reverend Sharpton and Reverend Herbert Daughtry, who I was talking about, they re-baptized me with these brothers because I wanted them to know where you are is not who you are. 

If people look down on you because you're in jail, you can say, wait a minute, my mayor was in jail. If they look down on you because you're struggling in school, my mayor struggled in school. My mayor lived on the verge of homelessness. My mayor had problems. That's why it's so important. It's not so much important for me, but I want to be a symbol to Black men, because Black men are catching hell all over the globe, brother. we catch hell. 

Boisseau: Always have been. 

Mayor Adams: Right, you know what I'm saying? That's the common denominator, no matter where you are, everybody will say, well, at least listen, I know I'm doing bad, but as Chris Rock once joked about it, well, at least I'm not a Black guy. Know what I'm saying?

Boisseau: Amen. One thing about our show, we are big on stories, right? A lot of people see the glory of you being the mayor right now, but your story is your testimony. Your story right now, I bet loads of people don't even know that you had to walk that path to get to where you are today.

Mayor Adams: Right, right. What we have to be careful about is that, the same thing they did to David Dinkins, they're trying to do with me. They eroded David Dinkins' base and they made his base go after him. David Dinkins turned around the city. If you go look through studies, he turned around the city in safety and economics. He managed to heck out of the city, but he… People allowed the noise to get in the way. So do an analysis, when I inherited the city in January 1st, 2022, we were dealing with Covid, crime was through the roof, there was, our children were not learning, we were not invested in foster care children. Jobs were not here. Tourism was not here. No one wanted to get on the subway system. There were encampments all over the city. The independent financial experts gave us a low rating. 

Now look at two years later, two years later, it's hard for people to realize I've been mayor for two years and four months, two years. We have more private sector jobs in the history of the city. We built more affordable housing in one year than ever before in the City of New York, transitioned more people out of homeless shelter to permanent housing than ever in the history of the City of New York. Right in Harlem community, we brought down crime, removed 15,000 illegal guns off the streets. Our children right now are outpacing the state in reading and math. We have more private sector jobs, as I stated, decreasing unemployment among Black men in particular, but the entire city in general. Tourism is back in the city. People are back on the subway system. 

We've turned around the city in two years, two years with Covid and with 191,000 migrants and asylum seekers that we had to pay for. You know what's very interesting about it because people step to me all the time and say, Eric, you are giving away the city to the migrants and asylum seekers and have to give them the facts. Number one, I can't stop the buses from coming in. That's against federal law if I try to do that. I cannot deport anyone that commits a crime over and over again. The City Council law won't let me do that. I have to give them three meals a day and a place to stay based on law. The biggest thing, that's the most detrimental, they won't even allow me to allow them to work. The federal government won't even permit me to allow them to work. I can't even say to them, listen, go volunteer, help us remove graffiti, clean up the streets and I'm going to give you a stipend. You're not working, but I'm going to give you a stipend. The federal government won't even allow me to do that.
They dropped this problem in my city with a $4 billion price tag and I can't get any help from the federal government to get it resolved. So what it does, it makes people say, hey, you are messing up our city, Eric. You know what's interesting? Check this out. They're doing the same thing to Chicago, the same thing to Houston, the same thing to Los Angeles, the same thing they started doing to Philadelphia. What does all of those areas have in common? All Black mayors.

Boisseau: Because that's where they’re shiping all the migrants. Let me ask you a question. What gives — because I always wanted to know — the governor from Texas, what gives who and what gives him authority to send them? Because they're coming through Texas. What gives them the authority to send them to New York City like that? 

Mayor Adams: That's a great question because he could, if our laws here in the city don't allow me to do what he's doing. Our laws here in the city, I have to allow them to come in. His attitude is, listen, you're going to stay here for 24, 48 hours then you're bussing them out, I can't do that. Really some of the stuff he's doing is we believe is illegal, that he's forcing people on the bus, but the city laws in Texas give him the leeway to do that. Here in New York, we don't have those same type of laws.

Louallen: One thing I see that you was adamant about, and I was so happy, about the rat situation in New York, because it is ridiculous. I think that's very important.

Mayor Adams: Well said. What it is is that I hired a rat czar because I hate fucking rats, man. 

Boisseau: You got to go, man. None of us like the rats. 

Mayor Adams: You know what I'm saying? You could get the most gangster brother turn into a little girl if a rat pops out.

Boisseau: My partner right here. If a rat came out right now, he would jump through the ceiling. 

Mayor Adams: What our rats czar understood, it was the plastic bags. See, we didn't always have plastic bags. During the sixties, you had those garbage cans, but after the sanitation strike, they allowed us to put garbage in plastic bags. We knew we had to get the plastic bags off the streets. Everyone else tried to container the garbage, put the garbage in containers. Everyone else failed. When I got into office, my Sanitation commissioner said we can do it, but it's going to take five years. I said, no, it's not. We're going to do it in two and a half years. 

We started rolling out food service businesses, other chain businesses, large buildings. We are now rolling out a containerization plan. When we get these plastic bags off our streets, you're going to see a decrease in rats and a real eradication of the problem. We're going to try other things as well, but it's really, as long as you have the all you can eat buffet out on the streets in those plastic bags, you'll never get rid of rats. We started some initiatives up in Harlem where we are zeroing in and focusing on just that.

Boisseau: Let me ask you a question. What's the situation with summer youth programs and stuff like that?

Mayor Adams: Great question, man. Great question. Because when I was in South Africa, I heard Archbishop Desmond Tutu say we spent a lifetime pulling people out of the river. No one goes upstream and prevents them from falling in in the first place. We've profitized poverty. Everyone waits downstream and says, okay, let's pull people out of the river. Because people are making paper from pulling people out of the river. We have an upstream mindset. People have always tried to get summer youth jobs. They lingered around 75,000. I said, that's not good enough. We have the highest number of summer youth jobs, 100,000 for our summer youth. We also keep school open with out summer rising program, 110,000 young people are involved in that all year round so they can get that extra care that they need. 

But we're doing something else. When I’ve been on Rikers Island, visiting Correction officers and inmates, because an overwhelming number of correctional officers are people of color and the overwhelming number of inmates are people of color. So I've been spending time speaking to the inmates. La La has a program up there, a brother, a Fatherless No More. He has a program up there. I've been going and speaking to the officers and the inmates and finding out, hey, what do we need here? What I learned is that 30 to 40 percent of the inmates are dyslexic. So we have been doing dyslexia screening upstream when they first come in schools so they don't end up believing they're dumb and going out doing stickups because they don't feel they could go through an education. 

We're leaning into foster care children as well. Foster care children, historically, aged out at 18. Imagine where we would be if we no longer communicate with our mother or father at 18-years-old? That's not even realistic, right? We are now extending that to allow them to have life coaches until they're 21 and we're paying for their college tuition and giving them a stipend a year after they graduate so they can be stabilized. Prior to that, we were seeing 6-700 foster care children age out every year, more likely to go to jail, more likely to be a victim of a crime, homeless, mental health. We’re seeing a complete turn and an increase in foster care children enrolled into college. 

And so we got a whole upstream mindset to make sure that we can get justice-involved youth, we can get them on the right track, training and jobs. If you give people a job, people don't want to be out here slinging drugs, man, people don't want to be out here. 

Boisseau: They want to work.

Mayor Adams: That's what they want to do. We want to give them a pathway to employment.

Boisseau: Right? Because man, like you just said, me and Doc, we OGs. When we grew up in Harlem, right, we had the PAL, we had all kinds of different opportunities to work in the summer youth. Summer was fun because we worked, we got a little paycheck, we can go buy our little sneakers. We played basketball, we were busy. Our mother kept us programming, doing everything. We didn’t have time to be getting into trouble. We wasn't even thinking about getting in trouble, but taking all the programs away, these kids, all they want to do is play video games and stuff like that or go outside and get involved in gangs, stuff like activity. It's a lot of nonsense going on, you know, today behind that. 

Mayor Adams: Well said. You know what the biggest threat to our generations coming up, the biggest threat is social media. Social media, I would, I would sit down. I didn't realize the importance of it at the time, but 5 p.m., 6 p.m., I would sit down and watch the news with mom. We would sit down and watch the news. You'll get some semblance of legitimacy to what was on the news because they had to go through some semblance of making sure all the facts right. 

Now on social media, brothers, you got all sorts of madness out there. And then you got duplication of bad services and they use algorithms to suck our children in dark places. This brother was train surfing, lost his life. He had like 30 million views. You look at some of the drill rap, drill rap is not bad until it turns into motivating beef where people are stomping on somebody's grave or urinating on someone's grave. Now you've got the retaliatory. The number of incidents of retaliatory shootings off of social media are unbelievable, man. 

The Kia car threat. We got an increase in grand larcenies of Hyundais and Kias because people had a Kia challenge on TikTok and people started going out stealing cars. You know what’s really deep? The TikTok we have in America that we look at, that's created in China, they don't even allow you to play it in China.

Louallen: Yes. I heard. They don’t allow that.

Boisseau: They poison our brains over here.

Mayor Adams: Right. 

Louallen: …TikTok is bad. Like you said it's a bunch of challenges and these kids follow it. So funding for the kindergarten. 

Mayor Adams: Yes. Pre-K, they call it. Pre-K, 3K, check out what happened. The prior mayor created these programs, pre-K, Summer Rising, and some other programs using money that he knew was going to sunset in 2024. He used the money that came from the federal government, what was called stimulus, Covid stimulus dollars. He put all these programs in place using that money with the full understanding… They were permanent programs that they should have been, but he put them in place with the understanding that, listen, by 2024, I'm gone. It's going to sunset and it's going to be left up to the next mayor who happens to be Eric Adams. 

We were saying that, listen, we're going to fund all of these programs. Then all of a sudden we got hit with this 191,000 migrants and asylum seekers that costs us $4 billion. We have to figure out how to do it. But in spite of all of that, and this is why the independent bond raters gave me an increase in my bond rating because of how I manage the crisis. We're still going to fund them. Even though the money is sunsetting, we just announced today in our budget, the pre-K, all these programs are going to stay in place. We're going to still make sure that these children, because that pre-K and that 3K is crucial to early development of a child. 

Now what's fascinating, we got 23,000 vacant seats because people are just waiting for parents to automatically sign up for them. So I took $5 million and I said, we're going to hit the streets. I partnered with the City Council. We're going to go to the streets where parents are not putting their children in 3K and we're going to sell the program. We're going to show them, this is how this is going to improve your child's educational opportunities. He should not be sitting at home watching TV all day. So we're going to go out and sell the programs to those parents that really don't know the power of pre-K and 3K. Because a lot of these kids are not getting enrolled and we're going to go find them and get them in the program. Pre-K and 3K is going to be in place. Summer Rising is going to be in place. We announced that all today at our preliminary budget.

Boisseau: I'm glad you did that because now I watch the news every day. I'm an adamant watcher. I need to know what's going on in the city. You would get a lot of backlash when the funding wasn't there. A lot of the parents will say, Eric Adams, you need to do the 3K, funding for the 3K. I'm like, ah, you get the backlash for what the previous mayor did. Which is not cool. 

Mayor Adams: Right. Right. 

Boisseau: I was happy to see that you got the funding and I think you increased the funding. 

Mayor Adams: We did. We did. 

Boisseau: So you increased the funding. Now everybody's, happy and loving you again. How you feel about that?

Mayor Adams: You know and I know, I'm not the original author of it, but we know haters gonna hate. 

Louallen: They definitely do that. 

Mayor Adams: It's easy to, it doesn't take a lot for someone to hate a brother, trust me. When you look at all we have done in the city and turning around the city, people still going to say, well you know what, I don't like that earring he wears. 

Boisseau: 100 percent. 

Mayor Adams: People are going to find a way to hate, but you just got to go, my motto is stay focused, no distraction, and grind. That's all I know. That’s all I know, brothers. 30 something years ago, I was saying, I'm going to be mayor January 1st, 2022. God placed that on my heart. People laughed at me.

Boisseau: You're talking about a brother who had a reading problem. 

Mayor Adams: There you are. 

Boisseau: Brother, you had a reading problem back then, right? 

Mayor Adams: That's right. 

Boisseau: Now you're the mayor of New York City. 

Mayor Adams: Think about that. 

Boisseau: Come on now, let's talk about that. 

Louallen: That's big right there. That's big. 

Boisseau: Think about that. Brownsville to Jamaica, Queens to Gracie Mansion. Let's talk about that.

Louallen: I know your mom is proud. I know your mom is proud. 

Mayor Adams: I say all the time, dyslexic, arrested, rejected, now I'm elected to be the mayor of the City of New York.

Boisseau: That's a good story right there. 

Louallen: When you got elected, how was your mom and your parents, I know that had to be a real big touching moment right there? Your brothers, sisters.

Mayor Adams: Mommy died in April before the election. The doctor called me on the campaign trail. He said, Eric, your mother's not going to make it. The six of us, and I made my way. He says, if you want to see her, you need to get to the hospital because her heart stopped. They massaged her, they brought her back, but he says, listen, she's not going to make it. We may get one more try. 

And I got to the hospital and I sat in the room, my other siblings, they were not able to get there on time. I sat in the room and I heard the heart monitor, those final beeps. Then it went flatline. As painful as the moment was to be there in the room with her, because we were very close, we were very close. I gave her so much hell, man, those scars on her knees came from just praying, hoping her son can just survive. I was just, I was addicted to the streets, just made a lot of mistakes and she never gave up. And so she was just proud when I was able to, just get on the right path, man. I just say to mothers out there that's listening to you, don't ever surrender. Don't ever surrender. As long as there is a prayer, there is a possibility. 

Boisseau: 100 percent, amen. 

Louallen: That's for sure. We definitely love the bond, you staying real close to your siblings and like, it's very important y'all stick together. So congestion pricing, that's… 

Mayor Adams: Ooh. Here's the deal, here's the deal, because people roll on me all the time on this. One thing about being mayor, no matter what happens, people look at you. A guy lost his shorty, he looked at me and said, it's your fault. 

The state passed the congestion pricing bill. They should have, in my belief, they should have given it to New York City because these are our streets and we should have shaped it. If they're going to pass the law, give it to us so we can make the decision. They didn't do that. They gave it to the MTA. The MTA made all the rules, all the decisions. So we didn't have the input. A lot of people don't realize that we don't have the input. The federal government got involved. The state got involved. The MTA got involved. Everybody got involved but the city. 

The city, which I believe they should have dropped it to the City Council and to the Mayor's Office to shape what congestion pricing was going to look like. Now we were able to secure $100 million for those areas that were going to be influenced. We were able to give shift workers a discount. We were able to do some things but there would have been a different idea, in my belief, if we would have had more input. But folks need to know, the MTA was in control of that based on the state giving them the authorization to do that. Albany put this in place. And we're going to see how it's shaped. Hopefully we don't balance the congestion issue on the backs of working class people. That's what I believe my hope is at this time.

Boisseau: I got to commend you on something right before I ask you this next question. You traveled to Israel, didn't you? 

Mayor Adams: Yes. 

Boisseau: You traveled to Texas? 

Mayor Adans: Yes. 

Boisseau: You went to the White House to see Biden? 

Mayor Adams: Yes. 

Boisseau: You went to Albany to see Governor Hocul? 

Mayor Adams: Yes. 

Boisseau: You were trying to get things done. You were moving around. I've never seen no mayor travel like that. You were going everywhere to try to get some results and people give you a lot of backlash and I don't think it's cool. They put in place like right now, the congestion pricing, you just explained it. They put all that on you, the mayor.  I just feel like because a Black man is in power, they're trying to dump everything on the Black man, you know?

Louallen: I think it's more so people don't know. I think it's the information. Like we thought that was your issue, but like you said…

Mayor Adams: This is why your show is so important because I have to go below the traditional media, because when you look at our W's and what we have done, I hear it all the time. People say, wait a minute, I didn't know that. I didn't know y'all built more affordable housing. I didn’t know y’all… We settled union contracts of 300 or something thousand employees. What we're doing, we're outpacing the state in reading and math. 

When you start looking at our W's in two years and turning around the city, people say, wait, we didn't know that because all you see is, oh, the guy is out at the clubs all night. They want to portray to really distort the reality of what we have done. When you do an analysis, brothers, let me tell you something, man. It is impressive what I have done with my five deputy mayors in turning this city around. Everybody said it was going to take five years and we turned it around. 

Not only was I in Israel, I've been in Palestine. I sat down with Palestine leaders. I went down to the south of the border with people coming out of Venezuela to find out what's driving this. I went to Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, to find out what it is, because I believe you cannot be in the sterilized environment of your office. You've got to get in the streets and know what's happening in the street. I walked up and down 125th Street to find out what it's like at night. What's going on? Why is it homeless? Why on Park Avenue, 125, people sitting there using drugs, sleeping on the street. You've got to get out there and get engaged to really come up with real solutions.

Boisseau: That's big. That's real big. So mayor, this is a big question right here. 

Mayor Adams: Yes, sir. 

Boisseau: The protesting with the Jews and Iranians. What's the situation with all that? There's a lot of that going on all over the city. 

Mayor Adams: Yes, and I was talking to a Jewish cat today. One of the biggest decisions that was that was made that I think they need to think through that they're not showing the video from October 7th. People need to see that video. A lot of people just read, okay, they went and attacked people. You are almost you almost desensitized. But those of us who saw the video that is not released to the public and saw what Hamas did, not the Palestinians, but Hamas. When you see what they did, putting babies in ovens, raping women, cutting off their breasts, spitting on them after they die, celebrating. When you see it, you'll understand the dangers of Hamas. 

It's all these folks who are walking the streets. I was just talking to someone the other day. They talk about there are Gays for Hamas. I was like, are you kidding me, man? Hamas would have killed you. Hamas killed Americans. They killed Jews. They killed Muslims. They killed Christians. That concert where those people were at that they did all that murder? That was a peace concert where the people did it there on the border because they said one day we want to dance together with our Palestinian brothers and sisters. And they went and they killed the people who were advocating for peace. 

Now, those who are Palestinian who are protesting against what's happening in Gaza right now, they got a right to do so. Don't tell me that you're going to protest for peace and you're calling to kill Jews who are here in New York. They don't have anything to do with any of that.

Boisseau: None of that. 

Mayor Adams: So when I see Jewish students walking into Columbia University and they are being yelled at, spit at, called names, I'm thinking of Little Rock, Arkansas when those Black children had to need the National Guard to stand in front of the schools back during the 60s to let them in the school building. So you can't use hate to say you are stamping out hate. You cannot run around saying I am Hamas. We need 100 more Hamas. October 7th is a celebratory day. You are invalidating your cry to end a war when you are calling for the destruction of the people. 

Imagine if people were running around yelling and screaming kill all the Black people they see. We should have another George Floyd. We should have 100 George Floyds. Imagine someone doing that. I marched during the Apartheid movement. I protested. I march. I stood firm during Apartheid to dismantle Apartheid. But we were focused on dismantling Apartheid. We got to be focused on the issue and not look to have people receive what we say we should not be receiving. That's what's wrong and I don't think it's everyone that's marching, but there's a group just as they tried to do with the Black Lives Matter March. There are folks who are anarchists, they wait for an issue to happen and then they come into the city and disrupt. 

Two days ago, they were removing the tent out of NYU. People started throwing bottles and chairs and what have you. They wanted to aggravate the crowd. That's what people, there are folks out there that are just dying to have some type of riot to burn down our cities. Look at history. When they start burning down cities, what communities do they burn down? 

Boisseau: The Black community. 

Mayor Adams: Right. 

Boisseau: Right. We're not having that. 

Mayor Adams: That's right.

Boisseau: The days is over, man. The days is far gone, man. We're not doing that no more. You better go somewhere else.

Louallen: Your handler just said a couple more minutes. 

Mayor Adams: Yeah, I gotta bounce, man.

Louallen: Yeah. 

Boisseau: Give him one more question before we go. 

Louallen: Anything you want to say in leaving?

Mayor Adams: What I want to do, I want to do a regular check in and just keep you up to date of what's happening. I have 14,000 jobs that I need to fill. We have a, I think a 7.4 percent unemployment of Black men and even men and women of color throughout the city. I want to use your platform because you're talking to real people. I want to use your platform about MWBEs, the billions of dollars that we're putting in MWBEs, what jobs are available, what educational opportunities are available. I think it's crucial. A lot of parents don't know we dropped the cost of child care from $55 a week to less than $5 a week, $4.90 a week. I think it's crucial because no matter what I do, if it's not reaching the people, then I didn't do. 

I would love to do a monthly check in and just let you know here's what happened this month, here's some opportunities. This way the folks can know about the resources that we are doing and be part of the popularity of the brand must turn it to prosperity for everybody in the city.

Boisseau: Okay, man. 

Louallen: This is your home to be. 

Boisseau: You got the open invitation. Say no more.

Mayor Adams: I look forward to it. Listen, I'll see you Friday. Come Friday. It's going to be a grown folks party.

Boisseau: We're going to clean up a little bit for you, smoke some cigars and we're going to talk about it. This is your home. You can use our platform. We love to have you. This is a deal. 

Mayor Adams: Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate you, brother. 

Boisseau: Good evening, mayor, see you on Friday. Thank you once again. 

Mayor Adams: All right. Take care.

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