Candidate for Mayor, Council Speaker Adrienne Adams

By Nayaba Arinde
Editor-a-large

Mayoral candidate City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams told Our Time Press that she has been standing in the gap created by a issue-preoccupied Mayor Eric Adams for months now.
The Queens representative was elected to the City Council in November 2017, and became the Speaker of the New York City Council in January 2022, leading “the most diverse and the first women-majority Council in New York City history as the first-ever African American Speaker.”

While Mayor Eric Adams is now running as an independent in the November mayoral election, the June 24th Democratic primary has several declared candidates including former governor Andrew Cuomo, and fellow frontrunner Assemblyman Zohan Mamdani.

Saying that the City deserves a focused mayor, Speaker Adams told Our Time Press, “I have actually been doing a lot of this work for three years now. What really made me get into the race, though, was on the day that I saw four deputy mayors resign at the same time. That is unheard of, and for me, that was like watching the brains jump out of the computer.

Here are the four essential deputy mayors who have worked with our City Council, and they really did hold things together in the mayoral administration. It was unfathomable to me to see the 4 of them see something so wrong with the Mayor and his leadership and the direction the City was going–I could not sit back and do nothing.

“There has to be a voice for the people and the City of New York. I love this city. I love the work that I do, and I was born to do this work, and I’m ready to take it to another level.”
The last few months of 2024 saw City Hall in turmoil, with the mayor facing five federal charges for bribery and corruption. “Remember, our mayor was under indictment,” said the Speaker. “All of us in New York have been traumatized because of that. Myself included as the Speaker of the City Council.”

She said the relationship between the mayor and the City Council has been strained over the years. “…wanting to collaborate with a mayor who has not wanted to collaborate with the City Council. So it’s been adversarial.

“I still had hope that things were going to get better, but then when the scandal came, when the pieces of corruption from some of the people that he had put into place to take leadership positions from a police commissioner to other folks… “ it solidified her decision to run. “and quite frankly some of the people that got swept up into that were very brilliant people, who were innocent of ever doing anything wrong, and they happened to get caught up in this major’s scandal.”

Leaving her “Heartbroken. The ones who did not deserve any of this. The top person who comes to mind is David Banks, the best chancellor for the DOE that this City has ever had. He loves being an educator and our children, particularly our Black children, more than anything. This is a man who would put education over anything, and he would put our children first.

When it came to the DOE, he was breaking through barriers under his leadership, and together with my funding from the City Council, we put forth the first Black studies curriculum.
When I was the co-chair of the Black, Latino, and Asian Caucus alongside the City Council, under my leadership, I provided over $27 million to ensure that the Black Studies Curriculum is available in every single school.”

With last week’s endorsements from DC37 and AG Tish James, Adams declared, “It’s given us quite a boost.”
As for the DC37 nod, Speaker Adams said, “It means boots on the ground. It means a lot of support with our Get Out The Vote campaign.”

Motivation
“ I love what I do and was born to do this work. So now, my aspiration to be the first woman mayor of the City of New York pushes me even further. I am a wife, I’m a mother, I’m a grandmother. I want to make sure that this city is affordable. That it is safe for my children and my grandchildren. I do this thing unashamedly…I legislate the way that I live. I want my children to stay in New York City. In the city that they love. We all want this as New Yorkers. We don’t want our children leaving us. I want my grandchildren to open the front door when they go to high school every morning, and know that they are getting on safe platforms when it comes to public transit.”

About NYC housing
‘We have to make sure that our city is affordable. I have a Guaranteed Basic Income program that we have piloted for women in particular.”
With her Guaranteed Basic Income program and her Bridge Project, Adams said that she is successfully taking 161 women who have “experienced homelessness due to domestic violence or care taking situations etc., have left them without permanent housing previously, and giving them guaranteed income for 3 years, gives them stability and preventing homelessness and creating affordability by giving people a leg up rather than continuously keeping them down in our shelters with no place to look and no hope.”

Adams is a mother of 4 in a blended family, and grandmother of 11.
As for schools, Adams said, “The DOE has the largest budget in New York City, and [we have to look into] how the resources are being allocated right now. Who’s getting the funding? Where’s the money going?
“Our children are golden. There is a larger percentage of Black and brown students in our public school system. I am not a micromanager, but as a mother and a grandmother, I am going to have to be hands-on.”

Immigration
“We are a city of migrants and we are better for it,” said Speaker Adams. “We can provide pathways to work for them. They want to be an integral part of this society and make a living. We must protect our migrant population. We see that the federal government is now kidnapping people off the streets, and that’s something else that I have been combating as of late, where we have had a mayor who has wanted to bring ICE back onto Rikers…I am suing…and we got the judge to issue our Temporary Restraining Order. I do not believe that ICE has any business on Rikers Island.”

Adams challenged the “obvious deal made between this mayor and the Trump administration…in exchange for his case being dropped.”
The Speaker surmised, “Trump will be rounding up people in his mass deportation agenda.”
Mayoral chances?

‘I’m the only candidate in the race that has already successfully negotiated three city budgets successfully, and is now working on the fourth… I don’t need a handbook or a manual–I’ve been doing this work already.”