Transcript: Mayor Adams Calls In For Live Interview On SiriusXM Urban View Channel 126’s “Keepin’ It Real With Rev. Al Sharpton”

April 25, 2024

Reverend Al Sharpton: Reverend Al Sharpton, and we're back, 1-877-532-5797. Many times we get calls on the show from around the country about Blacks that achieve great positions and what are they doing. We have an opportunity today to get one of the highest profile Black officials in the country, and who is the mayor of the largest city in the country, if not the world. That is our own, Mayor Eric Adams, who was one of the original founders of National Action Network.

He just announced his executive budget for FY 25, fiscal year 25. It's a budget that he intends to continue the economic recovery that he inherited when he came into office and wanted to come on. I want you around the country, particularly you in New York, but you around the country to hear what he has done and what he's projecting. The mayor of the city of New York, Mayor Eric Adams. How you doing, Mr. Mayor?

Mayor Eric Adams: Quite well, quite well, Rev. I think the name of the show speaks volume, “Keepin' It Real.” Because as you look at this unprecedented time of Black leadership, not only on the city level, but you have the first person of color to be the minority leader in Congress, Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, four of the largest city in America. They are currently being headed by Black mayors. Chicago, Black Mayor Johnson, Mayor Bass in Los Angeles, Mayor Turner in Houston, and of course that I'm in New York.

We inherited cities that were in crises and we had an obligation to turn them around. When you do an analysis of what we have done, not only turn around the cities, but really lean into the historical inequities and inequalities and I like to say betrayal of communities of color. We are focused on that with this budget and what we have done in the last two years and four months.

Reverend Sharpton: Now, I'm looking at the data. The data says that between January 1st, 2022, and April 1st, 2024, this is under your watch, Black unemployment decreased from 10.7 percent to 7.9 percent. Let me say that again. Black unemployment decreased from 10.7 percent to 7.9 percent. Black New Yorkers are now 2.4 times more likely to be unemployed than whites, down from four times more likely in January 2023. I think that that is an understated major achievement.

Mayor Adams: So true. If you recall, that was something that you raised a few months ago where you zeroed in on a high level of Black unemployment. Right now we have more jobs in the City of New York than in the history of the City of New York. We didn't just look at Black folks who wanted a job.

We zoomed in on those MWBEs because we realized if you empower Black businesses and brown businesses, they are going to hire locally. We awarded a record-setting $6 billion to MWBE firms and a record-setting over 1,900 certified vendor firms that the city contracted with. We are looking at every area of really building a Black and brown financial stability.

Reverend Sharpton: Now, the other thing that caught my eye is dealing with the question of crime. We hear a lot about people are afraid there's crime, public safety issues. They always try to focus or give a perception of New York. When you look at the facts, overall crime in New York has decreased by over 3 percent into 2024 with significant reductions in shootings and homicides. Talk about that in terms of actual data, and how that happened and where you're trying to project going forward.

Mayor Adams: Inherited the city, January 1st, 2022, we had a 40 percent increase in crime. We're moving in the wrong directions. In that almost first week I went to shootings involving police officers. An 11-month-old baby was shot in the head. We were seeing the over-proliferation of gun violence, and really just to state that Black and brown communities were in fear. Black and brown folks were saying, "Listen, we really want to get our communities to be the safe heavens that they deserve to be."

So we put some clear initiatives in place because I believe you could have public safety and justice. You don't have to have a trade-off. This is what we fought for, for years. Now you look at two years and four months later, double-digit decrease in homicide, double-digit decrease in shootings. Five of the seven major crime categories are down. 

There's a bar, that is, bar graph, that shows big cities across America. You see that New York City is the safest big city in America. All that you hear about our transit system, they have about 4.1 million riders on our system every day. We only average six felony crimes a day. Now we want to get rid of the six, but if you put it in perspective, 4.1 million people and only six felony crimes a day. We're doing a job down and keeping our city safe.

Reverend Sharpton: The other area that is very, very important that caught my eye is in terms of education and childcare. The executive budget is, it protects the $514 million in city and state funds, maintaining the vital education programs. Allocating 25 million to enhance in-school, early childhood education, including Pre-K and 3-K availability for students with special needs. Expand upon that, Mr. Mayor.

Mayor Adams: This is very important what you just raised. Here's what happened when we came into office, of the prior administration put in place permanent programs, but they were using similar sunsetting dollars. When they put these programs in place, which were good program, good concepts, but the dollars were sun setting some sun setting last year, now all of them sun setting this year. We had to find a way to fund this even with the $4 billion that was taken out of our budget because of the migrants and asylum seekers. That's what we did.

The other problem that they were having is that they announced a 3-K, Pre-K initiative, but they had thousands of seats that were open. Right now we have over 23,000 seats because no one was going on the ground and really explaining to parents how important it was to get their children enrolled in Pre-K and 3-K, we're doing just the opposite. We're going to spend $5 million to go into the community and really encourage parents and show parents the benefit of the Pre-K and 3-K.

What we did was very important. Everybody knows one of the biggest impediments to women getting back in the workforce is childcare. We went to Albany and was able to come away with a real victory of taking the cost of childcare from being $55 a week, which is almost over $200 a month is down now to $4.95 a week. Unbelievable change, and is allowing parents to get the childcare and go back to work as they would like to.

Reverend Sharpton: Now, there has been some raising the question of you not restoring the budget for libraries in New York. Explain what your rationale is there.

Mayor Adams: Libraries play a vital role. We all know that. I used them as a child, a young adult going through college, et cetera. When you look at the libraries took away Saturdays and Sundays service. That was not our decision. All of our agencies and other entities all had to do financial services. We found over $7 billion in savings and everyone had to do that. The libraries made that decision that they were going to look at their savings to take away Saturday and Sunday services.

We're saying that that is not the right thing to do. We're still in negotiation with the City Council. There's a potentiality that the City Council may negotiate to restore that, but that is part of the process that we are going through right now. By the time we do a handshake with Adrienne Adams, who's the speaker of maybe the library restoration, maybe other restoration, this is part of the process of our proposed budget.

Reverend Sharpton: We should not consider this permanent, this is part of a process that could return it or could modify it in some way.

Mayor Adams: Exactly. This is our level of budget. Then we sit down with our partners across the aisle, our lawmakers, and we come up with the final determination. We did this twice. Speaker Adams, who is the first African-American woman to be the speaker, the two of us have navigated this city through Covid, through the migrants and asylum seekers. I tell her all the time, this is a proud moment because people are seeing how we can govern in very difficult and challenging times and we need to really lift each other up because of that.

Reverend Sharpton: You and Speaker Adams came in, and after Covid the city was dealt a bad hand for y'all still at the table, and look like they have not gotten y'all out the game yet. Mayor Eric Adams, thank you very much for spending time with us. I'm going to take a break and come back to you at Keepin' It Real with Rev. Al Sharpton. We'll be right back.