• catloaf@lemm.ee
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    7 months ago

    He was interviewed on NPR’s Morning Edition today. My favorite part of the interview was when they asked how he knew there were “outside agitators” and he said “I just had a gut reaction”.

    My second favorite was when they asked what made him decide to go in, and he said “when I learned that one of the outside agitators’s husband was arrested for federal terrorism charges”.

    Not someone who was actually there, not someone who was tried or convicted or sentenced, but one person who was present is married to someone who was once arrested for federal terrorism charges, and I assume released with charges dropped since he only said “arrested”.

    https://www.npr.org/2024/05/02/1248634146/columbia-university-mayor-eric-adams-nypd-student-arrests

      • huginn@feddit.it
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        7 months ago

        He won by 7k votes in a city of 8 million.

        404,513 to 397,316.

        I would’ve preferred Wiley but either her or Garcia would’ve made loads better as a mayor.

        Problem is there was this constant barrage of news stories tilting the election in his favor: deliberate fearmongering about crime to pump up his popularity.

        Such bullshit but it was definitely enough to swing 7k votes… if not 70k+.

        • ApostleO@startrek.website
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          7 months ago

          The population of NYC is 8 million, and they had fewer than 1M votes for mayor? That, like, 12.5%.

          Even if you limit it to just citizen population, I found that number to be 6-7 million. Thats still only a 14-16% voter turnout.

          The fuck?

          • huginn@feddit.it
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            7 months ago

            That was technically the primary. That’s 1M registered Democrats - which you had to be to vote.

    • Zaktor@sopuli.xyz
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      7 months ago

      The only “outside agitator” I’ve heard them refence is a 63 year old woman who’s been involved in peace and environmental protests. They obviously can read her Wikipedia page the same as us, but choose to only refer to her with boogeyman terms. She’s exactly what you’d expect a 63 year old female peace activist would look like but they want you to conjure up images of a grizzled Antifa veteran clad in black and tossing Molotov cocktails.

      https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/veteran-activist-joined-columbia-protesters-police-call-professional-a-rcna150261

      • CurlyWurlies4All@slrpnk.net
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        7 months ago

        I’m not from the US so I’ve been finding this story a little hard to track. It’s so weird. I was on a Joe Rogan sub (I don’t usually follow) and commenters were saying that over 60% of arrests were ‘outsiders’. No idea where they go that stat.

        • Zaktor@sopuli.xyz
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          7 months ago

          They might be being deceptive/deceived. There have been some protests where their policy is to only arrest non-students, so counting people who were “arrested” will have a different sampling than the people who are protesting. I certainly haven’t seen any reputable claim that most protesters on campuses are non-students.

  • ryven@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    7 months ago

    [Adams] “And so if you want to play the word police, you could do so. I’m going to play the New York City Police.”

    I’m trying to figure out if this is a threat or just an attempt to create a sound bite that didn’t really work.

    • QuaternionsRock@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      By “outside agitators” they mean people who aren’t affiliated with the university. I can’t speak for Columbia specifically, but I wouldn’t characterize the non-university-affiliated protestors that were at my university as “agitators” any more than the university-affiliated protestors were.