OPINION:
East Village New Yorkers, a community of predominantly college-educated Whites, Hispanics and Asians, roughly half of whom are between the ages of 19 and 35, loved Zohran Mamdani and his socialist-communist-Marxist politics so much, they elected him with more than 70% of their votes.
Then he announced plans to relocate a homeless men’s shelter to their neighborhood.
Now they don’t love him anymore.
Such is the way of socialists and communists and Marxists — they always love the warmth of collectivism until the collectivists come calling at their own doors.
Collectivism is great from a distance. It sounds so cozy and comforting; it uses words like “equity” and speaks the jargon of the pot-smoking pacifist, promising a shared life of ease and luxury to all.
We’ll all get along! — they vow.
You grow potatoes and he’ll hammer houses and we’ll all share in the profits equally! — they proclaim.
Then some 30-something newbie with a smarmy grin and a Jew-hating wife comes along and wants to build a homeless shelter in Walden Pond, and the whole thing goes south.
Vagrants are for thee, not me.
“East Village residents who voted for New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani by a 40-point margin are now suing to stop a building in their neighborhood from becoming a temporary homeless shelter,” Fox News reported.
“The lawsuit … seeks an emergency restraining order that would prevent the ‘rushed’ May 1 opening of the intake shelter … that would effectively replace the notorious Bellevue homeless shelter — a haven for often-dangerous vagrants that Mamdani plans to close by the end of the month,” the New York Post reported.
Voters should know they get what they vote for, and with Mamdani, his intentions were never disguised. He ran a campaign of blatant Marxist policy, condemning all things capitalist and promising all things communist.
As part of that agenda, predictably, he’s breaking down demographic barriers and forcing a unity of populations that don’t generally assimilate or associate. Individualism is cold, as Mamdani says, and nothing says warm a homeless man’s heart like moving him into an area of highly educated elites.
Notice he’s not hosting any of them in his governor’s mansion, though.
Remember when conservatives, fed up with Democrats’ open borders and busing of illegals into Republican-dominated communities, turned the tables and sent undocumented border-crossers to Martha’s Vineyard, land of the liberal dynasties? My, how the leftists howled. And sued.
“Marco Rubio blasts Martha’s Vineyard migrants for ‘outrageous’ lawsuit against Ron DeSantis,” Florida Politics wrote in 2022, after these bused illegals, on the advice of counsel, launched a suit against the governor of Florida for daring to send them to Martha’s Vineyard, where they were treated with far less love than they desired.
“The first thing they do is get lawyers,” Rubio said then. “Just think about that. They just got here. They’re not even here legally. Didn’t enter the country the proper way. And they’re immediately in court demanding rights and claims under our laws. It’s outrageous.”
Outrageous, yes; also, hypocritical on the part of the Martha’s Vineyard elites who didn’t immediately accept these 50 or so bused illegals into their own families — who didn’t give them homes, give them jobs, give them their daughters in marriage, but rather set them up with legal advice and lawyers to sue for enough money so they could ultimately get off the island.
East Villagers are the Martha’s Vineyard folks of New York.
Hypocrites. Not-In-My-Backyard elites.
But they voted for this; they voted for Mamdani.
The homeless shelter outside their own homes is exactly what they deserve.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “God-Given Or Bust: Defeating Marxism and Saving America With Biblical Truths,” is available by clicking HERE.
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