New York City Students for Justice in Palestine joins the Coalition to End Broken Windows and other organizations in protesting the re-election campaign of New York Mayor Bill de Blasio. While Mayor De Blasio has been championed as a progressive candidate, the past two years have proven to many of us what we already knew: that Bill de Blasio has only the interests of the ruling class in mind.
Just last weekend, Bill de Blasio visited Israel for the Annual Mayor’s Conference, and met with the mayor of Jerusalem, with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and then with U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro. His visit came at a time of heightened Israeli aggression, where over 40 unarmed Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank, most of whom were children, were brutally murdered by Israeli military and settlers in a single week. His visit was a clear portrayal of his unfettered support for the settler-colonial state. At the conference, he spoke on anti-semitism and reaffirmed his commitment to Israel, and later met with Israeli “victims” of stabbings. Last year, at an AIPAC event, Deblasio proclaimed himself a “defender of Israel” and assured the Zionist lobby that “City Hall will always be open to AIPAC” and that he would stand by them “in Washington or anywhere.”
Just as Bill de Blasio avidly supports the settler-colonial state of Israel, he also promotes imperialist and white supremacist policies within New York City. He has openly expressed support for the broken windows policing model, a tactic that disproportionately affects communities of color, and appointed as NYPD commissioner one of its first architects William Bratton. De Blasio has also proposed reforms at Rikers Island that his administration claims would ensure the safety of inmates, yet it includes provisions to further limit visitation and to increase punitive segregation. In addition, through crackdowns on the homeless living in the streets of the city, plans for the privatization of the NYC Housing Authority, and the designation of Business Improvement Districts (BIDs), DeBlasio has continued to promote the interests of real estate developers and gentrifiers and has disregarded oppressed people all over the city who are being pushed out of their communities and out of new york city.
Regardless of who is a “lesser evil,” politicians in both parties represent and promote the interests of the ruling class and not the interests of the people. On Thursday we will not allow him to lie to us yet again, and we will make sure DeBlasio knows our communities understand who he truly is and the interests that he represents.
Join us in protesting De Blasio’s re-election fundraiser Thursday!