A “historic” election: a former black police officer and anti-racist unionist from New York, Eric Adams, is due to become the mayor of the American megalopolis on Tuesday, an extraordinary journey for this poor child of Brooklyn, a young delinquent turned politician with the grip of the Democratic Party .
The post is said to be the most perilous and coveted after that of President of the United States and if the 61-year-old Democrat defeats his Republican rival Curtis Sliwa, 67, as planned, he will be only the second black mayor in the history of the United States. American economic and cultural capital.
Very moved after having voted in his native Brooklyn neighborhood, Eric Adams felt that this election represented social revenge for the “little guy” he was in his youth and therefore for working class New Yorkers.
“We have already won”, he said in front of journalists, drying his tears, without releasing a portrait of his mother: “I am not supposed to be here. But since I’m here, New Yorkers are going to realize every day that they also deserve to be in this “city” of eight million people, classified on the left and an incredible mosaic of communities and social classes.
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Skin color
“It’s historic!” Exclaimed Anthony Williamson, a 58-year-old worker, after voting for Adams: “That’s great. It shows that we all have a chance to make it happen in New York and America, regardless of skin color ”.
If the victory of Eric Adams is not in doubt, the participation rate promises to be low. Offices open from 6 a.m. will remain open until 9 p.m. for 5.5 million voters. Almost 170,000 have already voted early.
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In the last days of the campaign focused on insecurity, the future mayor caught up on television with his Republican rival Curtis Sliwa, a colorful character, still wearing a red beret and who in 1979 created a sort of of militia, the “guardian angels”, volunteer patrols supposed to fight against attacks in the streets, alongside the police.
Former police officer Eric Adams has pledged to be intractable against crimes and misdemeanors whose indicators have turned red in 2020. Thus, Any Morales, a 50-year-old Puerto Rican voted for him because she “liked” her proposals on security ”and that she is“ afraid to go out at night when people are attacked for free ”.
Attached to the right wing of the Democratic Party, Eric Adams appears both as a defender of the middle and popular classes, a leader against racial discrimination and also close to the business circles of “Big Apple” (“Big Apple”) , the financial lung of the planet.
Budget at 100 billion
The successor to the unpopular Bill de Blasio will manage the largest municipal budget in the United States: $ 98.7 billion for the 2021-2022 fiscal year.
Like his predecessors, Eric Adams will have control over the largest police force in the country (NYPD, 36,000 employees), whose reforms he will have to pursue, but without alienating his former powerful and unionized body of origin.
Because the next mayor keeps his old job at heart: he says that, as a young 15-year-old delinquent, he was violently questioned and then decided to “change the system from within”.
Become a police officer when New York was a cutthroat in the 1980s, he spent 22 years there and reached the rank of captain. In 1995, he founded a union that fights against racism.
In their history, the New York police have often been accused of turning a blind eye to violent, racist and corrupt agents. And she was again the target of complaints in 2020 for the crackdown on anti-racist protests by the Black Lives Matter movement, after the murder of George Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis.
In a city that has paid a heavy price for the pandemic (34,000 dead), Eric Adams will have to manage the return to normal of schools, offices and businesses. Also fight against glaring social inequalities, poor housing, poor infrastructure, climate risks. Finally shut down Rikers Island, a terrible overcrowded, ultra-violent and unsanitary prison.
After leaving the police in 2006, he was elected senator for the state of New York, then president of the borough of Brooklyn, stepping stone to New York City Hall. Eric Adams is also proud to have gone vegan in 2016 to cure his diabetes and wrote a cookbook to convince African Americans to do the same.
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