- cross-posted to:
- progressivepolitics@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- progressivepolitics@lemmy.world
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/nyregion/mamdani-police-apology-floyd.html
Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City, said on Thursday that he intended to apologize for comments he made in 2020 calling the New York Police Department “racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety.”
He said that the remarks, which he wrote in June 2020 in a social media post in support of the defund the police movement, were made after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis a month earlier.
The comments were made “at the height of frustration,” he said in an interview with The New York Times, and were not reflective of his current campaign or “my view of public safety and the fact that police will be critical partners in delivering public safety.”
If the left flank will throw him out for saying “I’m sorry I called the police racist” then no wonder the Dems keep trying to win the center.
If even an inch of pragmatism is a step too far then even I would give up.
But it’s only “pragmatic” because there are non-leftist voters who might throw him out for saying “cops are racist”.
It’s more pragmatic because the NYC police are a legal mafia. Be a shame if there was a “lapse” in his protection because some officers were a little upset at his bluntness.
No, it’s pragmatic because frankly the police (even as corrupt and racist as they are) are necessary and making an enemy of them will undermine anything else he’d try to achieve.
How is anything supposed to get better if we’re expected to swallow our representatives denying the institutional racism present in our society, especially when we’re the ones targeted by the violence and selective law enforcement?