NYC Mayor/2021 Megathread

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Dear God, as someone who works and volunteers in the mental health field — put a fork in him. He’s over. What an absolutely disgusting mischaracterization of mental illness.

Yeah this isn't a good look for him. I'm pretty sure this is in the context of looking at anti-Asian hate crimes from a mental health perspective though (as opposed to a racial perspective).

If I am being honest, I don't think that bigotry against Asians is much of a problem in general (which is not to say that it doesn't exist or anything like that - it clearly does) and I am also very suspicious of the supposed increase in anti-Asian hate crimes, which strikes me as Stamp's law in action and also, if I am being more honest, a reflection of Asian prejudice against Blacks. If you are looking for racist motives when you previously ignored them, you might suddenly find lots of cases that could be labeled as hate crimes when, really, they are examples of vicious anti-social behavior of criminals who aren't really motivated by racial animus - they just have no values or morals, while also being influenced enough by background racism to say something prejudiced to their victim, even though they'd attack a Mexican woman as soon as they'd attack a Chinese woman. Overall, I view this phenomenon as being similar to the phenomenon of Trump supposedly causing an increasing in racist bullying in schools - I guarantee this was a function of teachers paying more attention. I was constantly called racial slurs in school in the 2000s. I just thought that was normal and thus never talked about it with authority figures.

This is not to dismiss the problems of vicious criminal behavior. Asians are clearly being victimized more and more by crime, which is increasing substantially in some cities. Asians have every reason to be concerned about this. It's important to see it for what it is though: if you think it's driven by racist hatred and not by the motives of anti-social predators, that is pretty likely to cause communalist animosity, increase racial resentment and conflict etc. If you see it for what it actually is, there are easy solutions that can bring people of all backgrounds together: take crime very seriously and work to reduce it using all levers available.

There was a video a couple weeks ago of a black man that hit an Asian woman out of the blue as the two were passing each other.  Seemed pretty obvious from both his speech and his movements that he was in some sort of psychotic episode, whether from a schizo-related disorder or a drug that caused similar symptoms.  But of course because of the races of the people involved it was being investigated as a hate crime.

Far from a usual expression of mental illness, but it is a problem.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

There is no justification for voting for Adams

Adams, unlike Yang, Garcia and a couple others, does not have the indefensible position that students should be required to be COVID vaccinated to return to school but teachers shouldn't, so that is a big plus in his favor in my book.

https://nypost.com/2021/05/13/where-nyc-mayoral-hopefuls-stand-on-vaccines-in-schools-remote-learning/

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

There is no justification for voting for Adams

Adams, unlike Yang, Garcia and a couple others, does not have the indefensible position that students should be required to be COVID vaccinated to return to school but teachers shouldn't, so that is a big plus in his favor in my book.

https://nypost.com/2021/05/13/where-nyc-mayoral-hopefuls-stand-on-vaccines-in-schools-remote-learning/

But he also wants 1 teacher for every 400 students…

Was pretty clear to me he was speaking of it as addition to regular classes.  I don't think it's a great idea but it's not what it's been presented as in soundbites.

 Requiring children to take a vaccine that's still basically in experimental stage for that population while you don't for the adult population where the safety has been well demonstrated is just beyond the pale to me.  I was thinking Garcia or Yang would be best, but learning this switched me over to Adams.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Who is likely winning the Latino vote? Wiley?

So far Adams has been cleaning up in the Bronx, including the heavily Hispanic parts.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Comments from 2018 about Hasids coming back to bite Sliwa

https://nypost.com/2021/06/25/gop-mayoral-hopeful-sliwa-blasted-orthodox-jews-in-bigoted-rant-video-shows/

Republican mayoral nominee Curtis Sliwa made bigoted generalizations about Jews in a 2018 videotaped rant in which he accused the ultra-orthodox community in New York of making “babies like there’s no tomorrow,” not voting “the way normal Americans vote” and being abusers of welfare.

At the time, Sliwa said the Reform Party, which he headed, would only endorse candidates who agreed to oppose “the bloc” — which he identified as the ultra-orthodox leadership and their followers.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-non-apology-nyc-republican-mayoral-candidate-rejects-antisemitism-accusation/

The Guardian Angels founder declined to apologize in the video shared with the media, instead inviting Orthodox Jews to sit down with him to “resolve our differences.” He also reminded potential supporters of his work on behalf of Jews.

“My two youngest sons have been raised Jewish. They need to read this? To say to themselves, my father is an antisemite? Come on, even my worst critics out there would recognize that’s a shanda,” said Sliwa, who became the Republican nominee for mayor on Tuesday. “So I’ll reach out to meet with you and hopefully we’ll be able to resolve our differences.”