It’s safe to say that the people of New York City are ready for a new mayor, and certainly one who isn’t Bill de Blasio.
Sure, he gave the city universal pre-K but had some faux pas over the years—most recently in 2020, when he was accused of anti-Semitism for a tweet addressed to the Hasidic Jewish community over social distancing rules during COVID and also (this one was big) for not standing up to the NYPD who had shown excessive force toward citizens during the George Floyd protests this summer.
One of the many candidates stepping up to take his place is Maya Wiley, an activist, professor and veteran of City Hall, who says she will handle things much differently if she becomes the next mayor of New York City. To start, she doesn’t think there should have ever been a curfew during the protests, she tells co-host Molly Jong-Fast, producer Jesse Cannon and Beast editor Harry Siegel in this members-only episode of The New Abnormal.
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“You can not have a control and containment model of policing that sees who are, who are expressing first amendment rights as the enemy,” she says.
She also made it clear that she won’t bow down to bullying from police unions like many believe de Blasio did. “[The NYPD] works for us. You’re public servants,” she says. “We’re going to put the public back in public safety. And what I mean by that is civilian oversight are the rules of the road. Of the priorities of policing, we are going to right-size it, because it does not make any sense to have police doing functions that other experts should be doing like mental health crisis response.”
When it comes to the city’s economy, she plans to take a Depression-era approach: investing in “communities that have been hard hit by COVID.”
Plus! Molly asks her about Cuomo’s allegations (“There has never been any change worth fighting for where you didn’t have someone who was difficult to work with.”)
Listen to The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Stitcher.
