The Critical Mass Black Agenda and the NYC Mayoral Election

By Nayaba Arinde
Editor-at-Large
“Like each and every other community we expect our issues to be addressed,” veteran activist Omowale Clay told Our Time Press. “With our Black Solidarity Coalition we are trying to create our Black Agenda to present to whomever will become the mayor of New York City.”

The latest Siena Research Institute poll has Democratic Party nominee Zohran Mamdani at 44%, independent Andrew Cuomo is at 25%, Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa is at 12% and independent Mayor Eric Adams at 7%.

Meanwhile, using disputed crime rates as his impetus President Donald Trump is threatening to federalize policing in New York City, as he has done in sending National Guard–to other Black mayor-led cities such as Mayor Karen Bass’s California, and deploying 800 National Guard troops in Mayor Muriel Bowser’s Washington, D.C., where he has also federalized the Metropolitan Police Department temporarily.

Mayor Bowser said that crime is going down, and, “While this action today is unsettling and unprecedented, I can’t say that given some of the rhetoric of the past that we’re totally surprised.”

Mamdani says he will hire 200 lawyers to tackle any fallout from federal force boots on the ground. Adams said that the increased law enforcement presence in the city could help with the City’s gang issue.

Brooklyn’s international activist and educator Dr. Rosemari Mealy told the paper that according to NYC stats “approximately 22.7% of the population identifies as Black or African American alone.

That means a Black political Agenda must address this vulnerable population by: ensuring better maternal health care for Black women; address the issue that NYC’s Black students are selectively being denied admission to the city’s specialized high schools; reparations–as a part of any candidate’s Black Agenda can translate into exposing the thievery of the developers and Deed Thieves who have and are contributing to the housing crisis faced by Black People.”

“The Black Agenda is pressing us to resolve some of the basic issues that have been confronting us,” said Clay, chair of the Brooklyn-based December 12th Movement. “The first thing the Black Agenda has to be is led by a Black leadership that is independent of the political machine.

It can operate in that context, but it must not be a prisoner–specifically of the Democratic machine, which has been an entry point of the rise of the right in this country.

Our vacillations around the question of the demands for what our people need–and the conciliation on that part at the risk of losing one’s election, has compromised the legitimacy of our demands.”
Clay began the list of most relevant demands.

Stopping Deed Theft
“Number one is the stopping of deed theft, and it is stoppable, but it has to require tremendous struggle and exposure on our part.

It cannot be tied to whether the machine is going to fund you to be elected again. It cannot be tied to whether the machine and outside interests from other groups who have other priorities, are the ones who dictate, and influence what our elected officials do.

People are stealing our peoples’ homes left and right in a conspiracy not only between insurance companies and landlords, and real estate agencies, but with judges in our city; to acquire private property from us.
Bed Stuy is a central point where that is going on.”

The liquidation of public housing
Clay declared, “The Black Agenda in our community has to be our coming together, breaking down some of these organizational differences, and barriers to our collective unity. A Black Agenda can only come about with collective unity.

There has to be a critical mass of our people who can agitate, and get the attention of our people to focus on what our agenda is.

So we can talk about the privatization of public housing. It’s really the liquidation of public housing. The liquidation of Section 9 – which was a government subsidy for affordability, is now being replaced with Section 8, which is finding for landlords.

“What determines what is affordable? A Times article said it is not years away, but decades away. We have some work to do right now. This mayoral race is one of the expressions where we are able to do that. Some people have laid out what they will and won’t do because they have done it in practice already. We have to look at new voices to hold accountable to that.”

Mamdani has pledged to build 200,000 affordable homes. Adams “City of Yes for Housing Opportunity” plan, cites the creation of over 100,000 new homes over the next 15 years.

MTA AND CHILDCARE
With a transport fare increase to $3 possibly imminent Clay continued, “Take the MTA. We have our ongoing Fair Fares campaign. They are raising the price of people going to work, to school, to the hospital, for people who can’t afford it.

Who determines affordability? Can we afford it? No. There has to be a restructuring of mass transit. Here everybody has to pay the same fair, but do not make the same income. It hurts, Black, Latino, people of color, and the poor working class.”

As Mamdani rolls with his universal childcare plan with “free childcare for every New Yorker aged 6 weeks to 5 years;” Adams pushes his additional $80 million in funding to expand access to childcare and early childhood education.

“People have raised this issue of universal childcare,” said Clay. “That should be a no-brainer. How can you go to work if your children have not been taken care of and educated? That should be a priority.

The Agenda is about things that we have not had resolved like single payer healthcare, things people don’t think will be done. The government will not do anything that we are not collectively organized to make them do.”

Black solidarity and Black unity are more important now than ever, according to this senior community advocate, “because they are trying to disappear us on every level. We have to build real friends, and real allies, and expose real enemies of our people at every level, at every color.

Liberal Democrats have laid the basis for the beginning of the motion of the right by appeasing and compromising, and never being clear about whose interests they are operating in.

Now Trump has nationalized the police in DC, and launched this question to take over the cities not to make them better, but to try and marginalize us even before. He is talking about coming to New York, Baltimore and Chicago, wherever people of color are, who can be a distraction to his own issues and white supremacy.”

The focus goes beyond this November’s General Election, said Clay.
“We are building a Black Solidarity coalition not just for this year, but for the years to come. Some of us remember the Freedom Party. We have to build a political structure for us to unite on, debate on, and move as one with.”