Terri Wisdom: I'm Terri Wisdom, and this is Harlem Network News. As many of you know, Harlem Network News is a media platform. We started at the onset of COVID. We are still here. We consider ourselves an essential service.
We jumped in the deep water when Black folks were walking around Harlem thinking they could not get COVID, that it was something that Black people couldn't get. So in that instance, we really had to start the network. They did not see themselves on mainstream television, and so it was important, and we're still here, we've continued.
We are here to assure that Harlem and the Harlems of the world, and the entire world, knows what our story is. People need to be informed, engaged, and called to action. Very, very critical. Before we really get started, we want to thank you, Mayor Adams, for joining us with Harlem Network News. Prayerfully, this will be the first of many interviews where we can really speak truth to power and assure that people are properly informed.
We want to just acknowledge and pray for those that lost their life this week in the mass shooting. We are praying for those who were victims as it gravely impacted all of us. We must do better, demanding a change for the gun laws, to stop the gun violence, the trafficking, and get to the root causes, because too many people are being killed by gun violence.
This is personal for me. I lost my son, Ali Sam Waymon Wisdom, three years ago on the Shinnecock Reservation in Southampton. I am an active member of Harlem Mothers and Fathers S.A.V.E. with Jackie Rowe-Adams, we're endeavoring to make a difference. Most of our cases are cold cases. So this is personal for me.
So Mayor Eric Adams, and I'm also from Queens, so I got a little synergy going. Springfield Gardens High School.
Mayor Eric Adams: What high school did you go to?
Wisdom: Springfield, Springfield High.
Mayor Adams: Okay, okay, I love that.
Wisdom: Yeah, yeah, so, you know, I know the turf. And it's interesting, because I've been in Harlem most of my adult life, you know, so it's very interesting. And my parents really came from Harlem to Queens. So very, very interesting.
Mayor Adams: I love that.
Wisdom: Great legacy story. So, Mayor Adams, at such a time as this, you're wearing a double hat. You are the sitting mayor, and you're campaigning in the mayoral race as an Independent Democrat to win an unprecedented second term as the second Black mayor of New York City.
We at Harlem Network News are really about speaking truth to power and want to assure New Yorkers know what you're actually doing and what you've done. Because in some instances, mainstream media, maybe due to too many clips, it's hard for that messaging to really get out.
So we want everybody on the street to have a list, like knowing what Mayor Adams has actually done. So if you would share some of the highlights of what you have done to improve life for New Yorkers, and to improve government for New Yorkers, and also specifically what you have done for Black and brown New Yorkers. And that is not a race-based question, given the economic disparities that have been reported with our city comptroller for the mean income for Blacks in the city, in the state, and the mean income for whites. So if you could just elaborate on that. Thank you.
Mayor Adams: No, thank you so much. And let's do first, top down and look at what we have done in the city. And you know what's interesting, is that when we look at our programs, people don't realize they are helping Black and brown people because they don't see it specifically saying that, but they do. So when you talk about the number of people who are formerly homeless, that have moved into permanent housing, we broke a record of that, who are in our shelter system, Black and brown. So they benefited from that.
When we talk about dealing with those who are incarcerated so that they don't continue to go into the revolving door and making sure they are having the training they like, they need, like our CRED program, giving them real skills, who is occupied in Rikers Island, Black and brown. When you talk about dealing with street mental health illness, when you're on the street, who do you see that are dealing with mental health illness? Black and brown. Same with foster care, paying the college tuition of foster care children.
We have allowed 6,700 foster care children to age out every year. Now they have life coaches until they're 21 and we pay their foster care. Who's in our foster care system? Black and brown. When you look at what we did with M/WBE, $19 billion in M/WBE, no other city in the country has reached those numbers.
Two billion has gone into our housing development fund. Those are helping Black and brown people. Came into office, Black unemployment was four times the rate as white unemployment. We dropped by 30 percent in this administration to address the issue. Giving NYCHA, not only high-speed broadband for free so that children could have remote learning and the adults can have telemedicine, but we also put in place and secured things like the NYCHA land trust, which finally is going to use federal dollars to deal with the $88 billion capital deficit that NYCHA has.
Who lives in NYCHA? Black and brown. And so making sure that our public schools are safe, building new schools, teaching social emotional intelligence, how to deal with stress management, teaching our children breathing exercises, thousands of internship programs, Summer Rising program all year [round] of school. Who are in our public school systems? Predominantly Black and brown.
100,000 summer youth jobs for our young people. No one ever has been able to do that before. Who benefits from those summer youth jobs? And when we focus on NYCHA and low-income communities, again, Black and brown. And so not only did I have the most diverse administration in the history of the city, first woman [of color] to be a first deputy mayor, second chief of staff of the Mayor's Office of color. The first one was under Mayor Dinkins, first Dominican to be a deputy mayor.
I could go through the list of all the firsts that we have accomplished. And so when you look at what this administration has done for the entire city, like bringing down crime and taking 22,000 guns off the streets, et cetera, but we had an agenda that was specific for those who were low-income working class people.
[That includes] putting $30 billion back in the pockets of working class people, paying off medical debt, [making] childcare free. I mean, dropping the cost of childcare from $55 a week to less than $5 a week, universal afterschool program. And so all of these programs, one doesn't see it because it doesn't say it, but it is helping low-income New Yorkers who are predominantly Black and brown.
Wisdom: Okay, well, thank you for sharing that Mayor Adams because I'm Terri Wisdom, this is Harlem Network News and we are here with our sitting mayor, Eric Adams. So very, very critical that you just did a running list of things that you have done, because I think it's important that people know. And because there are such grave economic disparities, whatever is happening to Black and brown people, because we all live in this city together, it's impactful to everybody. You know, that's what we look at.
So if you bring up the bottom, you know, the people that have the extreme disparities and the extreme problems, I mean, those are some of the root causes, as we know of incarceration, of the gun violence, of education is really critical. And it is empowering to hear you say that, because in my experience, at least I'm looking in Central Harlem and our schools are 99.999 percent Black and brown children. That's what I see. And Central Harlem, you know, in particular, the district that does Central Harlem.
So we've got to look at that because years ago, there was something that spoke about separate but not equal education. You know, so these are some of the challenges that we're facing and that we have to overcome. And I guess I'm jumping it because you raised the educational issue. When I also just saw on breaking news today about the specialty high schools and what the percentages are for Black and brown kids. So we're working on it. Okay.
So Mayor Adams, we can't really go forward. I know with the mass shooting, what are some of the things that you or from the city perspective can directly do to address this matter? I mean, this has been a prime today. So thank you.
Mayor Adams: And that is so important what you stated because there's a city, a state in a federal response to gun violence. And we have to ask, what can we do on a city level? So what have we done? We removed close to 23,000 illegal guns off our streets.
3,000 this year alone, we've gone after ghost guns and really focused on the ghost guns. And because of our action, we see the lowest number of shootings and homicides in the last six months in the recorded history of the city. And we focus on these dangerous guns., and I stated when I was running for office, I was going to put in place a gun unit that was specialized in going after guns, and we lived up to that, and we're seeing the results of that.
And because of the removal of those dangerous guns, we're able to see homicides and shootings go down because you can't shoot and kill someone if you don't have the gun to do so. And then I've partnered with our district attorney's office.
The New York City Police Department has partnered with the DA's office and they have taken down serious dangerous gangs, which predominantly are having an overwhelming number of the shooters that we are experiencing in our city.
So it's so important to go after the guns, go after the shooters, but we need our partners from the federal level to stop these guns from coming in our community. And we need our partners on the state level to look at some of the laws that have created the revolving door of shooters and those who possess guns. We're going to do what we have to do on the ground level. And we have done that and we will continue to do that.
Wisdom: Well, thank you for that. I mean, obviously– and this is Terri Wisdom, I'm Harlem Network News. I'm here with Mayor Eric Adams. And obviously if we don't have the guns coming in, we get the guns, but then also obviously we know that we've got to like work on some of those internal causes.
You know, what are the traumas that are making, and also for young people, particularly to feel safe. You know, that's one of our pet projects. And like I said, this is personal for me. I'm in the process of working on some documentaries on gun violence and involving young people. Okay, so moving on.
Mayor Adams: My heart goes out to you and the loss of your son. And I know that every time you hear of a shooting, every time you hear of an innocent child being shot, I know you relive the trauma because the trauma doesn't dissipate and it doesn't go away in time.
And so that's why we must do everything possible so parents don't go through these tragic incidents. I visited two families who had Shivas because they lost their children, two young ladies. And I went to the funeral yesterday of Officer Islam. And so I know parents never get over this trauma.
Wisdom: Yeah, yeah. And it's one of the things where you really, or for me, it gives me more purpose, taking that pain and putting it into purpose. That's the way. And unfortunately, even in Harlem Mothers and Fathers S.A.V.E., I know three people in there personally. And another person that's in an organization with me, another young woman just lost her son like a month ago.
So this is becoming a new norm and we gotta step up to it. One of the other questions, we're hearing like kind of a buzzword where people are saying that you are the real estate mayor. So if you could just kind of address that, part of it has to do with the housing that you're developing.
Breaking news today, 400,000 housing units that are affordable and in the planning. But then folks on the street are kind of like, okay, some of the people that are funding your campaign are real estate people.
Obviously big news like 10 days ago was the 145 Harlem Project. And the owner of that is like a big single funder of yours. So people are just concerned as to how that connects to what you're able to do. So if you could address that, and I know it's a hard question, but that's the kind of questions we want you to answer for people. So thank you.
Mayor Adams: Actually, there are no hard questions when you authentically care about people and you know you're doing a job. I love answering any and all questions. So we should peel back that question for a moment. Number one, real estate pays 40 percent of our income taxes, 40 percent. Without real estate in this city… What oil is to Texas, real estate is to New York. You don't have large real estate; you don't have police on your streets. You don't have teachers in your schools. You don't have your roads paved.
Real estate in New York and real estate taxes is a major part of our revenue in the state. So we should first understand that. The financial ecosystem of our city depends on real estate. Second, the 145th Street Project, the person who's in charge of that is not a funder of mine. In fact, he's a lobbyist. The most he can even donate to my campaign is $450, I think. That's the most he could donate. If you're a lobbyist, you cannot donate more than that.
And so he's not a funder. I don't think he has even written a check, to be honest with you. I would have to check, but it's quite possible he never [has] written a check for me. And the local council person, Yusef Salaam, he supports that project. That's in his council district. And I like to listen to local council people to get their thoughts on projects and to have the lead.
He supports the project, and I support what local council people within reason believe in. I am a strong believer in making sure that small property owners, we have 700,000 small property owners in the city. I believe we need to support them. We need to separate laws based on small property owners and large property owners, because small property owners are predominantly Black, brown immigrants or working class people.
So if you own a 14 unit building and you were caught up in the no rent movement that happened over COVID, who's gonna pay your mortgage? If you say not even a modest increase in rent that is fair to tenants and landlords, who's gonna pay the increase in taxes? Who's gonna pay the repairs on the building? Who's gonna pay the utility costs as increased? We are choking small property owners and people tend to see them as the major large property owners.
We ignore the fact that the small property owners are working class people, where all of their wealth for the most part is tied up in the buildings that either they bought or was handed down to them from their family members. I can't tell you how many small property owners are telling me they have tenants that are not paying any rent at all. They are fearful that they're going to lose their property. That would be devastating for working class people in the city and no one talks about them.
No one talks about small property owners. And imagine a universe where we're saying at no time you should ever be able to raise rent increases while everything around you is going up to maintain your buildings. Buildings are gonna fall into disrepair. We're gonna create ghettos. We're gonna create poor living conditions for working class people. That is not a smart decision.
Wisdom: Yes, all of it is very complex. And thank you for the clarification on the owner of the 145, cause I literally saw that in print and I can send it to you. So these are some of the disparities and news myths that it's important to dispel.
On the 145 project, there's a lot of rumbling up here in Harlem where a lot of the community people feel they weren't necessarily engaged and they're very concerned about what is affordable with the AMIs and even with the reductions.
So we're working to get real clarity and also to be able to hold accountable if there are gonna be benefits to the community that the owners are held accountable because we're in the back of Columbia and university and accountability. And what is affordable? Who's going to be able to afford it? And many, many of the Black New Yorkers have lost their houses and are on the streets or in shelters or having to go to another city. So these are some of the great, great, great concerns. So we thank you.
Mayor Adams: And those concerns should be real and we should continue to advocate for affordability and your definition of affordable for who, this is something I hear often. Let's keep in mind that it must be low, middle and market rate. That is the financial ecosystem.
When you have 75, 25 or 80, 20, the market rates help pay for the affordable apartments. And when we say affordable, it must be for not only low-income New Yorkers who are messengers at a minimum wage, but also for my teacher and accountant. They're hurting too.
We're hemorrhaging working class people. And so if you make it too low, all of the units, then you are pricing and saying to my teacher, my accountant, you can't afford to live in the city and they are leaving this city and we can't lose our middle working class people in the city.
Wisdom: Okay. Well, thank you, Mayor Adams. And if you have any closing statement, please now is the time, because we got to move. Yeah.
Mayor Adams: Thank you. Last person from Harlem that was the mayor was Mayor David Dinkins, and he played such an important role in the city. That was 30 years ago since we've had a mayor of color. 30 years ago. Mayors of color should not only have one term, and we've delivered in this city. I'm looking forward to another four years of delivering for New York.
Wisdom: Okay. Well, thank you for that. And don't be a stranger. I'm Terri Wisdom, Harlem Network News. You can find us on YouTube, all social media, harlemnetworknews.com and harlemnetworknews@gmail.com, 646-261-5397. If you have breaking stories and Black media needs your infusion. So thank you, Mayor Adams for having that happen. Have a good one.
Mayor Adams: Take care.
###