NOT ‘DUH’ BEST MIGRANT REMARK
Adams makes snippy comment on hotel mess
Days after a controversy over transferring migrants to a Brooklyn shelter began to die down, Mayor Adams revived the issue Friday when he appeared to mock the Latin American asylum seekers who protested the city’s move by sleeping outside the hotel they were being transferred from.
Adams once again blamed outside “agitators” for fueling dissent over the city’s decision to move the approximately 1,000 men staying at a Midtown hotel to Brooklyn to make way for families and children — but he folded another wrinkle in Friday when he called out the migrant protesters themselves.
“A few agitators went there and started yelling and screaming and saying: ‘Don’t leave, you don’t have to leave, defy leaving.’ So 40 to 45 of the 1,000 decided, they said, ‘We’re not going to leave, this is inhumane, we’re going to sleep on the street.’ Duh! Are you serious?” Adams said and then began to chuckle, in comments on the Caribbean Power Jam’s “Reset Show.” “I mean that’s not even making any sense.”
Eventually the men who’d been living at the Watson Hotel — and some of those who later slept on the street — made their way to the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, where the city set up a congregate, barracks-like shelter to house them. Adams himself stayed there one night last week as well and said the lodgings were “warm” and that the men staying there were “thankful” to the city.
And while that gesture put a damper on the Watson Hotel dustup, Adams’ comments Friday only served to draw more attention to it.
Asked whether it was appropriate for the mayor to mock migrants with his “duh” comment, Joshua Goldfein, an attorney with the Legal Aid Society’s Homeless Rights Project, suggested the remark reflected a broader policy problem when it comes to how the mayor has treated the homeless, incarcerated and migrant clients that the Legal Aid Society represents.
“The people who were sleeping outside were residents of the hotel who were genuinely unhappy and dissatisfied, or not comfortable sleeping in the barracks-style, 1,000-bed environment that they were told they would have to go to,” said Goldfein.
“That’s why they were out there. They were people that were genuinely concerned and wanted to highlight that.”
Political observers acknowledged that while Adams’ comment Friday clearly amounted to a gaffe, they questioned how much it would actually hurt him among average New Yorkers.
One attributed the “duh” remark to the fact that Hizzoner was born and bred in the Big Apple.
“That’s what a New Yorker would say. Adams sometimes makes gaffes that are explainable by the fact that he’s a New Yorker,” said Doug Muzzio, a Baruch College political scientist. “With the advocates, it’s sort of a problem, both with the language and the substance of what he’s saying. With the vast majority of New Yorkers, I don’t think it’s an issue.”