Transcript: Mayor Adams Appears on WBAI 99.5 FM's Annual LGBTQ+ Pride Special

June 25, 2023

Carlos Menchaca: If you've just tuned in, you're listening to WBAI 99.5 FM's annual LGBTQ+ Pride special, which is also streaming live at wbai.org if you're on the go. I'm Carlos Menchaca, joined by my co-host Jeff Simmons, for this morning's special. We were just talking to Randi Weingarten. She's such an inspiration and I'm so thankful that she's at the helm of so much that is happening and that needs to happen in our schools, in our communities.

Jeff Simmons: Carlos and I also recently wanted to get the perspective of New York City Mayor Eric Adams to discuss his vision for furthering LGBTQ+ equality in our city. We asked him about that perspective, but also about the landscape of anti LGBTQ legislative proposals across our country. We did catch up with him while he was traveling at the time. So you might hear a slight gap or two in the sound, but for the most part you're going to hear his comments. We appreciated the mayor taking the time to talk with us. Let's play that segment. 

Mr. Mayor, thank you so much for joining Carlos and me here on WBAI, this pride month.

Mayor Eric Adams: Thank you. It was great to see you both. Jeff, you've been really holding things down for a long time and Carlos was a real pioneer. I think of you often when we deal with the migrant crisis, and hope one day we'll do a show specifically on that because you really understand what this is all about right now.

Menchaca: Thank you Mr. Mayor.

Simmons: So, Mr. Mayor, I want to start off with a very general question. What does Pride Month represent to you?

Mayor Adams: It means a lot to me and for so many years. I don't disconnect Pride Month with many of the other months, Black History Month, Juneteenth. All of these are the intersectionalities of people stating that we have the right to live free from oppression, abuse, based on our lifestyles. I remember as a police officer during my days of 100 Blacks In Law Enforcement Who Care with GOAL, Gay Officers Action League, as they were fighting for their rights, and I'm standing side by side with them. So this has been a long journey, and I believe we're moving here in New York City, closer and closer to the world we want, but unfortunately in other municipalities we're not. I think we must continue to lift up our voices and fight.

Simmons: On that note, we are looking at the unprecedented surge of legislation across the country that targets the LGBTQ communities. A number of these measures have passed, many others making their way through legislatures. How do you make sense of this?

Mayor Adams: Really troubling, and I really think, and I could be wrong, but I really think this is the fallout from the Trump years in office. I always felt that Trump would leave and we would get over him, but what is going to happen to us from the residue of what [inaudible] divided and mean in so many areas. I think the extremes are really hurting our country. When you look at, 18 states have enacted repressive new laws that restrict their ability for minors to receive gender-affirming care, and 33 states have introduced even worse legislation to prohibit access to gender-affirming care for those and older. So you're seeing the lawmaking process being used to oppress the LGBTQ+ community and I think is really disturbing and we cannot ignore it. New York City cannot be this island where this is the only place in the country where you could receive the level of respect and dignity that you deserve.

Menchaca: Mr. Mayor, the legislation that we're looking at really focuses on education and really this moment is focused on the trans community. So much hate against the trans community. What do you think has created this climate as we look at New York and across the country, what do you think is at the heart of this climate?

Mayor Adams: I believe number one, education is so important, Carlos. I think that it plays a role, but we have [inaudible] balance of education with enforcement, because if we don't start educating at a young age and allowing our youth to understand the beauty of our diversity, then they’re going to feed into some of the negativity. I keep coming back to the same thing, Carlos, which is very interesting, the role of social media.

Menchaca: Mm-hmm.

Mayor Adams: People don't realize when I was coming up, and I'm sure even you're younger than I, but I'm sure even when you were coming up there was no real place for hate to congregate at this magnitude.

Menchaca: Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Mayor Adams: Social media allows hate to come together from across the globe and to use the pain that people are experiencing to have it displaced, to hate other groups. We cannot underestimate the role social media is playing and spreading like cancer of hate. I go online sometime and look at some of the rhetoric and it is frightening what our children are reading over and over again, particularly in municipalities where you don't have the diversity like you have in New York City. I think that's why in New York City we're able to displace some of that negative thoughts because we interact with different people all the time, but that's not in every municipality. It's just the opposite.

Simmons: Mr. Mayor, you recently signed an executive order to protect access to gender-affirming healthcare in New York City. Talk a little about why that's important to you and what that will do.

Mayor Adams: Well, because it's so important. When you look at someone is experiencing or going through a medical transition to have them, number one, think about how draconian this thought is. Number one, the person who's receiving the care can be prosecuted, the person who's given the care can be prosecuted. Then you want to go to another state. If they're in another state, they're saying that you can be prosecuted and you want the state to participate in your draconian actions.

Here in New York, we assign an executive order, that is not going to happen here. We are not going to use governmental resources to participate in this. We continue to use the term over and over again, safe haven, sanctuary cities, that is who we are on so many levels, and it's not going to stop when it comes down to those who are going through a medical transition. This executive order is not going to use our resources to cooperate or participate in any way with this action.

Menchaca: I really appreciate that, and I love how you connected it to the sanctuary work that you are leading right now in the city. I want to bring us into the topic deeper, as we think about supporting our youth. In New York City, how is the administration focusing on upstream solutions regarding our youth? Many youth who come from New York, many youth who come from outside the country, really seek their own sanctuary in their transitions. How is the administration focusing on our youth?

Mayor Adams: In so many ways, because it's so important. That's the heart of our administration. I always talk about Archbishop Desmond Tutu's quote, "We spend a lifetime pulling people out of the river. No one goes upstream to prevent them from falling in in the first place." Our focus on youth is really zeroing in on that. But we're not just talking about it; we're putting money into it. The current city budget, I'm pretty sure the budget battles from your days.

Menchaca: Yes.

Mayor Adams: But the current city budget has nearly $6.7 million in new services to provide a wide range of support. That includes first of its kind, first of its kind, we say, that a lot in this administration. But the first of its kind funding for capacity building a transgender and gender non-conforming nonprofits to focus on our youth.

We're doing a whole culturally competent civil legal services for the LGBTQ+ community, but we're also doing peer navigators and financial literacy for runaway and homeless youth. I saw this as a captain in the 6th Precinct where we see a lot of young people going down to the park on Christopher Street who were thrown out of their homes because they decided to express to their family members who they wanted to be. So we are doing a real initiative around our faith-based community and expanding family acceptance programs of LGBTQ+ youth and to all five boroughs instead of just in Manhattan.

This is a city that is not just Manhattan-centered. We are expanding this throughout the entire city and we're doing a lot of services around HIV and sexual health services and awareness, and what I'm really proud of is our LGBTQ+ healthcare bill of rights and the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, transgender health booklets. So we want financial stability making sure that our children in foster care who are part of the community are getting the help they deserve and start building out that support within families, because we all know families are important to the stability that one needs to go through the challenges of when you decide to live in a manner that you see fit.

Simmons: Mr. Mayor, across the country, we're seeing states implement a standard or mandate a standard curriculum focused on LGBTQ inclusivity. This is something that has been pushed in New York for some time, but not made it through the legislature. What is your stand on this?

Mayor Adams: Yeah, the team is really leaning into legislation. I want to fully understand it, but let's be clear. Just like Stonewall inspired action across the world, we hope our inclusive curriculum efforts inspire people in other places, including across our state. I'm a firm believer that it's about education and the more we are able to have a real organized way of teaching education and using the collective audience of the classroom, I think that we can really dispel and get rid of many of the myths that are in place. So I think that lawmakers, it's unfortunate they didn't come to a complete end - during the end legislative cycle. They didn't come to a complete closure of this, but hopefully they would take it up immediately in the next legislative cycle, or if they happen to go back up, they would take it up.

Menchaca: I'm thinking about the Supreme Court right now, and we've witnessed some incredible reversals in our culture and one of those is reproductive rights. How are you seeing the country move as we look at the Supreme Court, as we think about marriage equality, as we're thinking about all these things that they have for a long time protected? Thinking about the horizon, how are you seeing this country headed with the Supreme Court and our LGBT community?

Mayor Adams: It's alarming, it's frightening, and it should be concerning to us, to all of us, but I am extremely optimistic about the American people, because we have gone through the dark ages, the stone ages often. You look about some of the rulings, everything around education to the different rulings that various groups had to live through. It was troubling when we saw the dismantling of a woman's right to choose, the dismantling of our gun rulings and laws, the whole right to carry.

It's clear that this Supreme Court, they have used politics, I should say, to really address some of the basic rights that we've had, and you'll see the same in the LGBTQ+ initiative. So we must really mobilize, and now we fully understand that some didn't. The connectivity between who's going to be the president and the powers of the president to appoint the Supreme Court. Some of this battle, Carlos, is when the Senate did not pick up Obama's attempt to appoint the Supreme Court justice. They refused to do so, and then to turn around and do just the opposite under the Trump administration, push it through a Supreme Court nominee.

So all this goes back to the basic level. We must participate in our local elections to make sure we have the right senators and congressperson, make sure we get the right president to make these appointments, that now we're seeing how it impacts our lives in a real way. So Americans, New Yorkers, we must be engaged to ensure we get the right representation to make these long-standing decisions, and not to turn back the clock on all of these issues in general, but specifically when we talk about the LGBTQ+ community.

Menchaca: As we close, I am thinking about the young people listening to us this morning and they're wrapped up in their Pride celebrations. They're thinking about all the things we've talked about. What are you, Mr. Mayor, saying to them this morning, as they think about this, as they hold this, as they understand their status as a New Yorker?

Mayor Adams: Well, number one, you think about it, the winds of change. They have never been blown by adults. The winds of change have always been blown by young people. I see the obstacles as opportunities. This is an exciting time to be alive and fighting for what you believe is right. As we look at almost 500 pieces of legislation across the country that target the LGBTQ+ communities and a number of them have passed, but many have not. This is an opportunity, as hate is spread throughout our country, there's an opportunity to spread love, tolerance, acceptance, embracing each other.

So we should look at this challenge like our forefathers looked and mothers looked at the challenges. Look at the challenge of the civil rights era, the women's rights eras. Now this is an era while young people can be very much engaged, and I'm excited about it, and I see it every day with young people as they are embracing and stepping up to the challenges of what they are faced with. So I don't see optimism, I see opportunity, and New York City is the launching pad for many of the things that's going to cascade throughout the country of how this is going to be the America that we all know it could be, inviting, exciting, and energizing the entire globe. It's going to be done with our young people.

Menchaca: Mr. Mayor. With that, we want to say thank you for joining us here on WBAI and bringing us that fierce advocacy for our community. Thank you.

Mayor Adams: Thank you, thank you so much, and it's good hearing from both of you. 

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