Brandon West
@brandonwestnyc
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Labor Organizer w/ @WGAEast 📣. Ex-prez of @newkingsdems 🗳. Socialist @nycdsa 🌹. Member @BrooklynCB6 📊. @WFMU listener 📻. A better New York is possible!✊🏾
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New Op-Ed written as a part of
@nycdsarjwg
!The mayor is getting everything wrong, the only way to have a safer subway and more just city is providing permanent universal housing for those who need it most. Check it out, link in bio! 🌹
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I've seen all my life, people who look like me get brutalized by the police when we peacefully protest. I myself am a victim of police violence. The police don't keep us safe. Clearly we've seen today that the police don't keep democracy safe either.
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Nearly one in 4 Brooklyn residents submitted a blank ballot.
Here are the results of the 2024 Dem primary in NYC, broken down by borough:
Overall, about 15% of votes cast in NYC were blank.
This builds on the excellent work
@AsInMarx
did in figuring out how to calculate blank votes.
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If a person of color has bad politics and supports bad things, then I don’t want them to be in a position of power. It’s that simple. Why are people making this harder than it needs to be?
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My grandmother lived for 97 years. She ended up in Jersey City, because she had to escape the KKK, who had a plan to kill her and her family. I can't imagine the full scope of what she dealt with in her life. She deserved more than a zoom funeral.
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Learned a lot at NYU Wagner. Also unlearning a few things as my politics have gotten sharper. But one of the random things that has stuck with me is when prof Mitchell Moss said “if you want to know who lived somewhere before gentrification, check the names of the funeral homes”
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Folks are mischaracterizing the internal conflcit within the Dems and the left (esp in NY). It's not between a fringe far left against a widely supported mainstream left. It's between the left and an establishment pushing conservatism. The LaSalle confirmation is a great example.
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Listen up, I'm only going to talk about this once. Let's talk about being black in leftists orgs. 🧵
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The fact that CSPAN still has call in numbers for random people to use to just go off on air is the last vestige of democracy in this country.
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A consistent left political force in this country will not be the Dems, this seems clear from this DNC. A very clear alternative to Trump, of course. But the literal parade of republicans and moderates on stage tells us there is only so much you can do from inside.
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Affluent “leftists” kinda need to wake up. Folks ability to live with comfort despite the rise of neo-fascism, complacency with an incrementalism that garners them access, and an over reliance in performative solidarity is all going to come to roost very quickly.
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I would like to remind everyone that there is a three percenter officer a part of the precinct that is a block from Barclays. I've seen his car covered with far right bumper stickers parked in front all the time.
NYPD ready for war. 25 patrol vans behind the Barclays Center. Easily 100 blue shirts.
Stay safe y'all. Think two steps ahead. This will be brutal.
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Nowhere is there a better visual representation of why identity politics is not an end in itself towards the liberation of oppressed peoples.
Eric Adams’ new NYPD commissioner is being appointed in front of a mural featuring Malcolm X, Nat Turner, Angela Davis, Huey Newton and Assata Shakur.
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Eric had record surpluses when he took office. He decided to pay down debt and give a bunch to the banks, and cut agencies to the bone and they can’t function. Coupled with a Governor who vowed to not raise taxes on the rich no matter what and he’s tanking gov better than Reagan.
INBOX:
@NYCMayor
's office announces another 5% budget cut across all city agencies, citing concern about "financial disruption" from the migrant crisis.
"The administration will seek to minimize disruption to programs and services, and there will not be layoffs," City Hall says.
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The democrats in NY and BK are pretty much operating as Republicans for years but people are just noticing now.
NEWS: Brooklyn's Frank Seddio & NY State Sen. Roxanne Persaud are calling for an "emergency rally" this Thursday to protest a new migrant shelter at Floyd Bennett Field a day after Gov. Hochul rcv'd permission from the Biden admin to house 2,000 people at the former airfield.
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BK dems are leaving tight races to dry, not donating to their campaigns, and are throwing a $5,000 plate gala instead. No GOTV infrastructure, most coming from WFP to keep its own ballot line. NY State Dems totally absent as well. This party does not care what happens to you.
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America loves it's symbolic gestures. Painting "BLM" on a street, and then not changing police budgets. Celebrating workers, but then not giving them hazard pay. We love ideas, but look at movements with suspicion, and sometimes hatred. Movement work is everything. Everything.
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Don't argue with centrists about "big government". You know what's big gov? A police state and a massive military industrial complex. A criminal justice system that incarcerates the most people on earth. We already have the biggest gov in the world, and the right made it that way
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I mean, for real though. The mayor just appointed his brother to an important 6 figure job in the administration. 🚩🚩🚩
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If you live in a huge new luxury condo in a gentrifying black neighborhood, that displaced a bunch of POC owned businesses and a grocery store, part of me feels you should just hold off on the BLM sign.
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With all due respect, the biggest on campus anti-war movement since 2003 is going on. Where is
@BKYoungDems
? Where are progressive clubs? I know you are focused on county committee but 77% of Dems support a permanent ceasefire. You're proving Dems are useless in this moment.
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I am so exhausted making the case that black folks don't deserve to be randomly murdered out in the open. Doesn't matter if they're criminal legal system involved. We've gutted communities and care for decades and folks need mental health care. The Mayor and Gov are a disgrace.
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Too little, too late. Such performative nonsense.
"One of our own is dead -- a Black man, Black like me. A man named Jordan, the name I gave my son,"
@NYCMayor
begins his speech on the killing of Jordan Neely.
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I feel less good about the NY political landscape than I've ever had. We have entrenched centrists running the state, a total ding dong as mayor, turnout plummeting, and the state and county Dem party is transactional as ever. Electeds need to get over themselves.
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Hochul is deeply conservative at her ideological core. Everyone choose to forget her early congressional record. She made an easy pivot and picked up a few social issues and performative left stances but is showing her true self. And progressives are covering for her.
Hochul, at the Albany PD station, says she opposes efforts to repeal qualified immunity for police.
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This might be unpopular, but starting a speech and acknowledging we are “on Lenape land” but then not suggesting we do anything different as a result of that is text book definition of performative. Upper class totally low stakes “consciousness” does not a revolution make.
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CUNY Law School seems to have no idea the type of person who goes to CUNY Law School.
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In Hebron there are. I went there in 2009. There were strict rules on where we were allowed to go. This includes the religious cite in the city that is split. I mean I experienced a fair amount of different treatment due to my race on my trip and happy to discuss it.
An outrageous lie from
@RepBowman
: "Myself, as a sitting member of Congress, could not walk through certain checkpoints in the West Bank because I wasn't Jewish!" There isn't a single checkpoint like this. He hates the Jews so much. He really does.
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Membership organizations are a mess. But guess what? It's the best thing we have right now. I can go on about the white-supremacy I've seen in all the political organizations I've been a part of. You don't fix the problem by just naming it and walking away. You have to build.
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Reminder that the people most marginalized almost always have to do the most work in convincing the majority of their own humanity.
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When people tell you the kind of person they are, listen.
Incoming Mayor
@ericadamsfornyc
assailed members of
@NYCCouncil
for sending letter asking him to reverse position on solitary confinement:
"I wore a bullet proof vest for 22 years and protected the people of this city. When you do that, then you have the right to question me..."
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A person’s identity doesn’t trump the impact they will have on other people. It never will. Stop weaponizing marginalization because it serves one of your interests.
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Don’t shop at Blank Street. It’s vc led and they are trying to push out neighborhood coffee shops.
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If you live in New York City, it is imperative that you go outside at some point today.
...then it's imperative you join an org that works on climate justice because it should not be mid 60s in Feb and we are all in trouble much sooner than we think we are.
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Update: I accepted a job as a community organizer at
@nyguild
! Excited to build real power for journalists, and help bring back local news. Also happy to be working in my old union! (Shout out National’s
@newsguild
new dope logo)
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I’ve been trying not to respond too emotionally to a very disappointing FY23 City Council budget vote. All I’ll say is electoralism is pointless if it is not entrenched in a clear independent member-led political project centered on working class power, community, and justice.
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The way we organize mirrors the world we live in- messy, problematic, and incomplete. Fighting is exciting, but I want to build deeper coalitions and alignment around a coherent electoral strategy. Weaponizing identity and internal conflict is not going to get us there.
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I want literal apologies from every Dem who harangued me for not enthusiastic supporting the Dem establishment enough.
Biden closing the border? Hochul single handedly dooming public transit capital projects for years? Literal genocide?
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Within DSA, I've engaged with more than a couple BIPOC folks who feel they have to constantly defend a sometimes great, sometimes hella clumsy organization to other BIPOC folks because of problematic things white members within it say or do.
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But more importantly no one has "used me". NKD haven't used me. DSA haven't used me. The Greens in college didn't use me. They all have annoyed me, yes indeed! But don't speak for me and my experience if I'm right here. Some of the people I trust the most are in these orgs.
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Nothing says intersectional feminism like damaging communities of color and potentially forcing frontline nonprofits to shut down because you want to hit back at individual councilmembers who just disagreed with your budget agreement with the Mayor.
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In 2021, I tried to center this story in how I talked about community safety. We've seen a reluctance from the left to really challenge the right in its fear campaign on what safety can mean. Then things got worse. We have everything we need to effectively fix these problems.
On a two-block stretch of Brooklyn's Brownsville neighborhood, the police stepped aside for five days and let residents respond to 911 calls. It was a bold experiment that some believe could redefine law-enforcement in New York City.
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🧵There is something deeply wrong in our politics in this state. To go from BLM plastered on our streets to borderline hysteria on public safety, ignoring the data and the actual remedies to making our communities safer and resourced.
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Carl Heastie needs to be primaried and it needs to be a national issue. The Assembly has become the new IDC.
The Assembly has wrapped session without passing either of these high-profile bills >
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Also I have to name that the left, in the spirit of inclusion, sometimes falls back into anti-black rhetoric. All I'll say is I knocked hundreds of doors in park slope etc. I heard my share of racist crap from progressives. Y'all need to do better.
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I’m 38, have a masters, have a defined career, but one time I lost the Russian roulette of needing medical care while my insurance wasn’t active and now I have the deeply embarrassing potential of needing to ask for help to pay for it. Hard not to feel disappointed in yourself.
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The Mayor just put out a budget, a fight looms, and the election is in a few months. We really need a "come to jesus" moment if we want to get some wins here. The process will be harder, but the product will be so much better if we can work in deeper coalition. Have a good night.
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Can most folks name one single policy idea from the mayor to deal with the cause of violence in communities except just “more cops”?
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"Hey white allies! it's us, lefty black folks. Remember us? We need to talk to you again about Barack Obama. Wait, stop, where are you going?"
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If you want a state to prove the concept that the Dems care more about defeating the left than doing much of anything in the face of the Right, look no further than the state of New York.
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In case folks are curious, I got elected as a Judicial Delegate to the convention and was elected to the Board of Directors of the
@foodcoop
! With my job, CB6, and of course DSA and NKD shenanigans, my time is booked solid, but I'm pretty excited.
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I am tried of scraps. I am tired of being given small tiny wins in the face of massive, grassroots led, publicly supported bills dying in Albany. I am tried of being told we have to wait our turn in the face of so much struggle and crisis. I am tried of the complacency.
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This is not possible. You can google it, it takes 2 seconds.
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This is not to paper over some real problems I've seen in the past few years. But this is a call to try and work together, learn, acknowledge that organizing isn't something you get great at in a hot second, and give voice to BIPOC folks in these orgs that struggle to get better.
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Good news!🎉 I'm happy to announce I was appointed to
@BrooklynCB6
! Really happy to continue to serve my community and organize marginalized and unheard folks. Also excited I get have more fodder for incredibly wonky dinner party conversations. Hope you like to talk about zoning!
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The right continues to have a massive impact on the mainstream left. Rolling back bail reform? “Common sense”? Fighting rent regulations and just cause? These aren’t left ideas.
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Literally every bonkers thing that has happened in NY in the last year relating to democracy issues is direct fault of the NY Democratic Party. Pro-democracy ballot initiatives losing? Redistricting? Botched IRC? Third party nonsense? Lt. Gov mess? All the Dems fault.
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I've never been unwilling to call out problems or admit mistakes. But we are really struggling as a movement to find systems that allow for growth but also don't purely platform the loudest voices. The challenges ahead really necessitate we get better at this.
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As I've said for months, DSA needs to pick up 2-3 seats every cycle to show real progress. On top of that, NKD and the opposition to BK Dems made big inroads today. People will say and spin a lot in the next few days but elections are multifaceted and there is a lot to celebrate.
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Reach out to
@ShahanaFromBK
about our race if you want her opinion. What I can say is that I had STRICT rules in my shop to not touch her lit, bad mouth her, or act a fool on twitter. Did it still happen a bit? Yes. But now I'm trying to be as helpful as possible to her office.
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Having just submitted a
@leaveitblankny
ballot, a few spicy thoughts on electoral politics.
The short of it is this. Despite popular opinion, maybe consider why you shouldn't put "run for office" on your vision board.🧵
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It bears repeating this is a CNN report. CNN.
CNN gains footage of the hostages the media usually ignores. Palestinians in Israeli captivity, tortured and amputated.
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We are gradually approaching the "DNC scrambles to get Obama to call the NBA players to make sure they don't strike during the playoffs because of BLM" moment from 2020.
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I'm sorry, if you are an elected and couldn't sign that letter about Jay Jacobs--which was way more measured and reasonable than it frankly needed to be--that is incredibly pathetic and you should rethink public service.
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This is what happens when you intentionally gut city services.
The mayor's management report is out for the first full year under Eric Adams. One statistic that immediately jumps out: the timeliness rates for applications for cash assistance and SNAP (food stamps) at 29 percent & 40 percent, versus 95 percent & 93 percent in 2019.
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I'm saying this with as much grace and understanding I can muster. Folks should have voted no on the budget.
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Everybody has a lot of opinions about the voting behavior of Park Slope all of a sudden. I will point out that 55% of the 39th Council District voted on the first round for a socialist candidate in 2021. That was almost 20k people. Doesn't even take full RCV into consideration
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I don't know how more abundantly clear it is that the Dem establishment and corporate interests sees it more important to stop leftists then do much of anything about the collapse of our democracy or the rise of the far right. Progressives and liberals can't ignore this anymore.
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THERE IS SO MUCH FEDERAL MONEY. THE STATE BUDGET IS TERRIBLE. WHAT IS THIS GARBAGE?
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I'm scrambling to get the details, but what I'm seeing in this state budget is pretty shocking. We are in such a unique position. Flush with federal money and massive needs not being met. All this fake rhetoric about the values of our leadership and this is what we get?
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When I was prez of NKD, the party establishment labeled me as rogue, anti-black, and under the control of white people who just needed a black face of the org. A party leader said I was a token to a full room of the County Committee
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I’m just deeply tired of fighting with people on the left about the value, dignity, and humanity of people with a darker skin tone of theirs.
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How many videos of folk getting beat up for just existing do people need to see to understand that huge swaths of the city have zero faith in the NYPD and what they do in our communities?
Any elected official who can look a constituent in the eye and tell them that “unconscious bias training” or “use of force regulations” are solutions to this kind of lawless violence is unfit to hold public office.
Defund this rogue agency.
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Ok so here are the rules for calling me “brother” casually:
My actual brother: 👍🏾
Black folks: 👍🏾
Other POC: 👍🏾👍🏾(❤️)
Labor comrades: 👍🏾
Old white radicals who “put in the time”: Alright
The occasional white dj/vendor at the
@WFMU
record fair: yeah, ok
Anyone else: No
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Social housing social housing social housing social housing social housing social housing social housing social housing social housing social housing social housing social housing social housing social housing social housing social housing social housing social housing
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This is just theater. Hochul doesn't care about this City or the people who live here. Also if you want to know a great way to ensure people who are involved in crime never reintegrate into society, make sure they can never get to a job on time and ban them from transit.
New: Gov. Hochul announces that she is deploying 750 National Guard members into the NYC subways to conduct bag checks, in addition to another 250 law enforcement members. She is also proposing a bill to ban people convicted of a violent crime on the subway from public transit
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When you hear a moderate say "we should have small government" they mean no taxes for the wealthy and no services and welfare for black and brown folks, mostly in cities. That's what that means. They aren't moderate. They are conservatives and they don't belong on the left.
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This is a pretty noteworthy story in itself.
The NYPD greatly restricted press access during their sweeps of Columbia and CCNY last night. But police apparently brought their own film crew into Hamilton Hall, where they even filmed on-site interviews with top brass, all overlaid with dramatic music
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This is an unpopular opinion, but I don't understand how you can subscribe to left politics, decide to run for office in a place as important as Texas, CLEARLY be less popular than another candidate also on the left, and still stay in the race anyway. It feels selfish to me.
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What the heck are democrats offering to voters in NYC and NY state? GOP-lite?
NEW: on possibility of right to shelter changing in NYC, chief advisor to
@NYCMayor
, Ingrid Lewis Martin says in the meantime “we need the federal government, the congress, the senate and the president to do their job, close the borders.”
#PIXonPolitics
@PIX11News
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Didn’t Adams tip off Ulrich that an investigation was going to happen? Am I crazy or are they breaking a lot of laws in the wide open?
Exclusive — NYPD officers were dispatched to the Brooklyn home of Mayor Adams’ top donor the night before it was raided by the FBI.
An IAB official requested a wellness check at the address, which former fed officials said was unusual
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Between parents worried about their kids's safety/health, oligarchs masquerading as party officials, growing fascism, working poor shouldering pandemic, and the assault against labor, we have multiple full blown democracy crises at once. This is not a moment for incrementalism
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There is almost this quixotic notion that electoral politics can easily root out corruption without changing the systems behind the scenes. Once people get into office, everything they do is based on a need to stay in power, or abide by that very system. 🧵
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Folks. Our society is deeply unmoored, and it's being driven by a Governor and Mayor who actively want to create the conditions for deep inequality, blame those people for that environment, and then further degrade them for political gain.
In the CNN exchange, Phillip gave Adams a very clear additional chance to warn against unnecessary violence, generally speaking, or warn people to be extremely cautious about 'taking matters into their own hands,' and he did not take it.
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Real quiet from the “big city Dems can only win on a pro cop message” crowd now huh?
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Now we know where the $200 million NYPD “IT” budget increase went.
Behold the NYPDs brand new Game Truck, coming soon to a block near you. Bunch of video game consoles inside.
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You can sure as hell bet I signed on to this letter! But a couple of separate thoughts about this in the 🧵
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I am preparing what could be the angriest and borderline unhinged tweet thread next week if things go off the rails in NY. I don’t want to have to post it. Please get your less politically savvy and constantly online folks to vote.
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I’ve seen many white progressives like anti-capitalist ideas but resist socialism on some kind of weird “cultural discomfort”. They see themselves as ruining class and they don’t want to admit it. They don’t believe in a struggle. A black pastor wrote about this in jail once…
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There is so much anti-black racism within the left that I've had to deal with. I love my white allies, but it's something everyone needs to really comes to terms with.
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I really want to be that dude who stands up and yells at a meeting “have you no shame?”
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The damage is already done, people especially in the US have been justifying mass civilian death for months now. If only we could have real criticism of the Israeli government here and it didn't cost you your career.
(Haaretz is an Israeli newspaper, similar to nytimes)
🚨Important! Haaretz definitively debunks iconic horror stories from Oct 7:
40 beheaded babies
Baby burned in oven
A pregnant woman's stomach opened & her fetus removed
Children bound together & burned
Pregnant hostage giving birth
Haaretz says only 1 baby was killed on Oct 7🧵
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Feel dismayed by the Mayor race? Turn up for the taxi drivers! This is totally winnable and a great example of how civil disobedience can win. The hunger strike is still going, blankets and drinks is appreciated, but also just your solidarity.
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