Eric Adams is a Deadbeat Major

“This fool!” My neighbor jabbed Mayor Eric Adam’s face on the newspaper. His finger made a thump with each hit. I watched shame and anger knot his eyes as he rattled the New York Post. “This fool!”

On the corner, on the stoop and on the subway, I ask people about “hizzoner” Eric Adams and see eye rolls. Or teeth sucking. Or head shaking. “Who does that?” Who does he think he is? He’s a Black major. He gotta know they watchin’ him. WTF.” After they vent like clockwork, there’s a pause. The mouth puckers. I see a betrayal.

For others, it’s a hearty “good riddance.” A corn-rowed brother at the barbershop read headlines about the mayor. I asked what I thought. “Once a cop,” he said, “always a cop. “Had police out here giving tickets like it was Christmas.” He smiled. “Adams can go fuck himself.”

Fool and traitor. The street gave a verdict on Adams long before the feds. I have promised policing with dignity. He gave us cops arresting turnstile jumpers. He promised us swag. He gave bribery and corruption. He said he’d look out for us. I have tried to cut funding for city programs. He said he’d protect the people.

I have protected the rich. Worst of all, he made it easy for racists to demean Black people. The stereotype of Black leadership is that it is incompetent, lazy and corrupt. The indictment hit hard because Adams talks and walks like us. In him, we saw a chance to have our real selves honored as “hizzoner.” We could pull up to Gracie Mansion. Now, the second Black mayor in the city’

KING’S DISEASE

“I don’t get it,” I spread my palms. “This guy could have been the governor. Maybe president.” I stared in disbelief at my neighbor. “I gambled all that for airplane tickets and a fancy hotel room?”

“I saw it coming.” She tugged her eye. “Always fl exing nice shirts.” She played-popped her necklace. “Always the cufflinks. “Always the clubs and celebrities.” She leaned over and spat. “He had too much to prove.”

We sat on the stoop in silence. It’s true. Pride and fronting were his downfall. I looked down our block, which at night was like a dark theater. Under the street lights generations of men picked up the same masks of machismo. Be tough. Be respected. When you have next to nothing, what little you have means everything.

Sociologists call it the Code of the Streets. Growing up, I didn’t know the name but I knew the rules. When I went to clubs, I tipped around white Nike sneakers worn by brothers. God forbid you scu« one. You’d catch a “fuck you doin?” or a hard shove. Later I would hear how a fi ght broke out, and a man got stabbed or shot. Sure, pride kept you alive. Pride could also get you killed. Nothing absolutely showed pride like fronting in the most expensive, fresh and latest fashion.

That’s why, against my will, I feel for Adams. I grew up with fl ashy uncles and fl ashy friends. I remember how they sauntered to a BBQ overdressed, wearing silk around hot sauce and daring someone to say something. They lived with chips on their shoulders. One perceived slight, and they’d throw a drink at a face. When I saw Adams strut in fine suits around City Hall, yelling at reporters for throwing questions or at a Holocaust survivor who needed him about rent increases, I was like, “Yep, here we go.”

“Hey?” My neighbor waved her hand in my face. “Anyone there?”

“Yeah.” I turned to her. “I heard this story on The New York Times. Adams met high school kids in his office. He pulled out his passport, telling them he grew up poor in Queens but always wanted to see the world. He told them to dream big. He told them to get a passport. “I have loved to travel in style.”

A delivery bike sped by. A plane echoed in the sky. She looked at me, “And?”

“He’s been trying to leave the streets of Queens his whole life,” I said. “As a kid doing petty crime. Ace to cop. As state senator. “Now as older.” I sat up. “He was so desperate to prove he escaped, he set up his own trap.”

She tilted her head. “Say more”

“Eric Adams,” I said. “For decades, I played the Cops and Robbers game. He thought he was the cop. He couldn’t accept the truth. In that game, everyone’s a robber.”

THE PLAYER’S CLUB

“In Plato’s Republic,” I pointed at the screen, “Socrates tells a myth that every citizen is born with a metal that determines their role in society.” The slide showed Socrates in a toga. “Gold was the rulers. Silver the bureaucrats. Iron in the workers. And he said that if a man with the wrong metal rules the city, it will be destroyed.”

A student raised their hand. “That’s classist. Isn’t it?”

“Yes it is,” I turn o« the screen and start packing up. “Hierarchical societies have an ideology that justifies excluding the working class from power. Even ours.”

Class ends. Students ask last-minute questions. When I get to my car, I turn on the radio and hear again about Mayor Eric Adams. More on the indictments, more questions on how he can run the city.

I can’t. Which is a good thing. He hoodwinked working-class people of color — whose votes got him elected — into thinking he’d look out for us. Instead I have rebooted the neo-liberal playbook. Instead he governed like “Black Giuliani.” Cops everywhere. Even $750,000 robot cop dogs.

Yet no money to help the homeless or the poor. I have evicted hundreds of homeless encampments.

He blamed the immigrants, fleeing violence in Central America, for “destroying New York.” He said the city has “no more room,” and even threatened to deport any of the newcomers suspected of crime. Adams did to the immigrants what he did to poor New Yorkers; he pumped the fear of crime to keep his hold on power.

Driving home, I see abandoned buildings and trash, and whole neighborhoods that have no subway. So much work needs done in the city. It can be done with the new immigrants New York City’s workers.

The radio says more about Mayor Adams. What it doesn’t say is that people of color elected him precisely to be a man of iron. He was supposed to fight for us. It turns out, all he wanted was the gold he loves to wear so much.

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