Statement from NY YCL on Eric Adams’ Anti-Immigrant and Anti-Working Class Politics
The New York Young Communist League (YCL) denounces Eric Adams and his administration's action to remove hundreds of migrants from Watson Hotel on 57th Street to Cruise Terminal in Red Hook on January 30th, 2023. This abuse and dispossession of asylum seekers by the NYPD is an overall attack on all working class people and we view this decision as a continuation of Adams' genocidal policies which protects the interests of the police state and overall Capitalist system.
Since Spring of 2022, there’s been over 43,000 asylum seekers coming into New York City. This is at the same time as the homeless population gets to 70,000 and shelters have increased by 40 percent. The Adams administration stated that the city is “At its breaking point” and is unable to provide adequate housing. As a result 600 migrants will be removed from the hotel and moved to the barrack-like terminal. Although facilities like the Red Hook terminal are referred to as “Humanitarian emergency response and relief centers”, in reality these are temporary shelters where hundreds of people will enter massive and non-distanced halls with hundreds of beds closely packed together. This idea that the city does not have enough money to provide for the needs of each person is a boldfaced lie. Instead of providing resources and protection for asylum seekers, the administration puts these individuals in close quarters and pours 11 billion dollars each year for the NYPD to criminalize Black and Brown working class New Yorkers. This is as at the same time as Adams strips education, mental health resources, and uses the police state to enforce a policy that terrorizes & punishes mentally ill and homeless New Yorkers for the crime of poverty.
The administration states that the move to Cruise Terminal is only temporary, but the current Administration does not provide any alternative plan for migrants to receive housing. Adams states that without “working papers”, none of the asylum seekers are eligible for any housing subsidies. This leaves individuals in an extremely vulnerable position, where the only options are dangerous, unhygienic shelters, or staying in street camps. Many have decided to stay in the cold because of the horrid conditions at these shelters. The landlord-Adams administration would rather protect real estate profit then allow for vulnerable individuals to receive care from the city. The New York Young Communist League immediately calls for the Adams administration to provide housing for all, regardless of citizenship status.
Many of the individuals at the shelter have cited their anger over the administration's decision, leading to large numbers of asylum seekers protesting and refusing to leave, citing conditions at the shelter. The YCL, forcefully condemns the Adams administration's brutal treatment of poor Black and Brown people and asylum seekers. We, the YCL, support the asylum seekers' demand to be provided with substantial housing and are in solidarity with their decision to fight back against this attack. New Yorkers know what a real solution would look like to the “migrant crisis” in New York City: instead of an administration prioritizing real estate profit and the criminalization of poverty, there needs to be a real investment in housing and thriving wages, not merely wages to reproduce the same destitution in order to keep going the next day. Instead of investing more than $11 Billion on the NYPD every year, we need to invest in social protection for individuals who have been displaced and criminalized as a result of the Capitalist system.
