OPINION:
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s newest appointment, Cea Weaver, to the Office to Protect Tenants, once ranted on the then-known Twitter platform that “homeownership is a weapon of white supremacy.”
Oh, boy. And the hits just keep on coming.
With each Cabinet pick, with each agency chief selection, with each mayoral office appointment, Mamdani seems to ratchet the Marxism. So far, he’s got Kamar Samuels as schools chancellor — the guy best known for shoving “integration initiatives” into Manhattan’s education system, a model that put equity above education. He’s got Lillian Bonsignore as commissioner of the city’s fire departments, the lesbian former EMS professional. He’s got Elle Bisgaard-Church for his chief of staff, an anti-Israel, Democratic Socialists of America faithful. He’s got Ramzi Kassem as chief counsel, an attorney who previously defended the openly anti-Israel activist Mahmoud Khalil — oh, and al Qaeda terrorist Ahmed al-Darbi, too.
And now comes Weaver.
As Newsweek wrote, “In a post published in August 2019 on the social media platform then known as Twitter, Weaver wrote: ‘Private property including and kind of ESPECIALLY homeownership is a weapon of white supremacy masquerading as ‘death building’ public policy.’”
Yikes.
Mamdani, in his opening hours as mayor, issued executive orders that revived this Office to Protect Tenants, an agency that was established in 2019 but that had largely stayed quiet. Affordability is its focus.
Whatever that means.
“The affordability agenda starts with the rent,” Weaver said, upon appointment.
She put landlords on notice.
“We are going to hold you accountable to operating [affordable housing] alongside the housing maintenance code. If you can’t do that,” she said, “we are going to offer you money so that you can do it, but you have to make the homes affordable. And if you still don’t do it, we’re going to take it away from you.”
So, landlords will get tax dollars to lower rents, and if they don’t lower rents enough to appease Weaver, then the city will take away their apartments.
Wait for it. Wait for it.
Courts will certainly be called to intervene.
After all, apartments are generally private properties, owned and operated and leased, by private property owners and private companies. America doesn’t actually allow for governments to wrest control of private properties for the cause of “affordability.” America’s public servants can’t simply nationalize housing.
But here’s the face-slapper. Mamdani will successfully redistribute wealth and take from earners’ to pad the pockets of renters; to pad the pockets of landlords; to buy votes. He will also successfully use and abuse tax dollars to boost his socialist programs and spread the socialist cancer even wider across the city, past city boundaries, infecting other states, other jurisdictions, other voting populations with his claim of compassion for all and pity for the poor. And when he is met with court battles for socialism that goes too far, like the seizure of private property rights?
He will use tax dollars to wage the court fight.
In the end, and no matter which way taxpayers turn, Mamdani will successfully strip freedoms and finances. The only unknown is how far his tentacles will reach.
America’s main goal now should be to confine his socialism to the Big Apple and stand back and allow the city to choke and fall on its own failed system. Failure must be the only option — a massive, gasp-worthy failure that is so utterly devastating that voters around the nation flee socialism forever more.
New York City, under Mamdani, is the canary in the socialist coal mine. Better the canary die, so the country can live.
• 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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