* Exclusive: One on One Interview with the Mayor

The Eric Adams Story - Part I

Mayor Adams is a Complicated Man, Who Rose from Poverty, to the Highest Office in NYC

November 6, 2023 / NYC Government & Polltics / NYC Neighborhoods / Gotham Buzz. News Analysis & Opinion by Michael Wood.

This past summer, while working on another story in collaboration with the Mayor's Office of Ethnic & Community Media [aka MOECM], I entered into discussions with the MOECM, about the possibility of an exclusive interview with the Mayor. The Mayor's Office of Ethnic & Community Media was created a couple of years ago, to enhance local media access to the goings on at City Hall, in order to better inform the public. Under the Adams Administration, part of that program included providing greater government official availability to somewhere in the neighborhood of 250 local media outlets.

Famod Konneh, Associate Director for Outreach and Engagement collaborated with me to make arrangements for the interview, which took place on Friday, October 20, 2023. It's worth noting that every reporting story done live, is a collaboration of a sort, between the journalist and the subject(s) covered.

The photo at right shows Jose Bayona, the Executive Director of the Mayor's Office of Ethnic & Community Media [aka MOECM], at the MOEDM operations cener which is in the basement of City Hall, while he was setting up the video conference.

Interview Preparation - Doing My Homework

I did a considerable amount of research into the Mayor's past, while preparing for the interview. I did all this prep work, even though Famod had told me I would be limited to 20 minutes via a Zoom video call, as I was pitching him for more time. When I first first started the research, I did it in preparation for the interview, but, as sometimes happens with the kind of reporting I do, the more I learned, the more I became interested in learning even more about the Mayor and his life story.

Initially I thought I would do a standard hard news interview about key topics of the day including immigration, crime, the public schools and the budget. But, as I journeyed into the Mayor's past, I became more intrigued with the idea of doing a different story.

The Adams Administration's Unheralded Herculean Effort Managing the Immigrant Influx

As I conducted my research, I decided that NOT to inquire about the Mayor's - seemingly unappreciated or underappreciated - Herculean effort to manage the huge influx of immigrants into NYC. This situation, turned crisis, began when Texas Governor Greg Abbott began bussing immigrants from Texas border towns, beginning in August 5, 2022, to NYC. Governor Abbott began transporting immigrants here without any communication nor coordination with NYS Governor Hochul or NYC Mayor Adams.

Nonetheless, Mayor Adams somehow found enough lodging for somewhere between 65,000 - 125,000 immigrants bussed in since then, who arrived in the city within the past year or so. The Mayor also managed to carve enough funding out of the NYC budget to provide security, food, healthcare and logistics for the newcomers, with what - until fairly recently [the past three months or so] - appeared somewhere between scant and lagging help from the likes of U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), and NYS Governor Kathy Hochul (D-NY), respectively.

In spite of this gargantuan challenge, Mayor Adams made sure NYC didn't miss a step. His Administration kept the influx of immigrants mostly off the streets, and appeared to ensure they were't coopted into criminal activities by providing for them, in spite of laws which forbade them from earning a living. This nearly heroic effort has mostly gone unheralded by the corporate media.

The photo above right shows the Mayor pondering a question I posed to him, during our Zoom interview. He's in the Mayoral limo enroute to his next event.

CLICK here to read the rest of the story about my exclusive interview with Mayor Adams about his life - profile.

Adams Sounds the Alarm - Hochul / Adams - Good Cop / Bad Cop

Over the past six months, Mayor Adams' increasingly vociferouos, plain-spoken calls for help in managing the flood of immigrants, appear finally to be succeeding in securing some of assistance from the NY State and U.S. federal governments.

Governor Hochul was the first to step up, providing some financial assistance earlier this year, and then by helping secure Floyd Bennett Field as a temporary immigrant staging area. Her efforts began in May and were green lighted in August 2023. This was followed recently by her second pledge of assistance, bringing NYS aid up to $2 billion, which includes nearly $358 million cost of using Floyd Bennett Field as an immigrant site / staging area. The $358 million estimate includes space rental, set up, logistics, healthcare and the like. NYS Governor Hochul and other legislators around the nation, also appeared to successfully lobby the federal government to grant temporary working papers to about 472,000 Venezuelan immigrants [nationally], of which somewhere between 15,000 to 40,000 are here in NYC. This temporary policy change will also reduce the strain on local and state resources, while helping the local economies.

My view on the efforts of NYC Mayor Adams and NYS Governor Hochul, was that they seemed [consciously or unconsciously] to play the parts of a bad cop / good cop team. I suppose in this case characterizing them as a bad pol / good pol might be more appropriate. The Mayor played the bad cop [bad pol from a Democratic party member perspective], by making a fair amount of noise about needing federal and state help with the migrant issue. This may possibly have culminated on September 7, 2023 when he shocked not just New Yorkers but Americans saying, "... This issue [the migrant crisis] will detroy this city...". How's that for a colorful, attention grabbing characterization of the problem?

Well, it seemed to have worked. On October 5, 2023 President Biden allowed the resumption of construction on the southern border wall, in areas where it makes sense, by freeing up $950 million in border wall contracts to address the problem. This was likely a response to a concerted effort not just by NYC & NYS, but also other legislators across the U.S., representing other big immigrant destinations, who were grappling with the problem and also lobbying the President to do something to slow the flood of immigrants.

The Roosevelt Hotel is shown in the photo above right on August 12, 2023. I checked in on the Roosevelt Hotel several times earlier in the year and what you see is mostly what I found. The Adams Administration set up the Roosevelt Hotel as a staging area to process incoming immigrants, before moving them to other locations. If you watched the TV reporting on the immigrant situation at the same location, you would have come away with the impression of overwhelming chaos. This might have fueled the corporate TV companies ratings and revenue, but TV broadcasters were essentially disinforming the public with video timed in conjunction with the arrival of new buses of immigrants coming into the hotel. TV broadcasters have done the same with the endless TV / video reports about crime, which have given New Yorkers the impression that crime is rampant. This is also at odds with the truth, which is that most crime categories in NYC have gone down considerably, the last year or so.

The Immigrant Situation is an Example of Democracy in Action

The immigrant situation was, and still is, an example of democracy in action. Texas Republican Governor Abbott's bussing of immigrants to NYC helped draw Democrats' attention to the burden that the southern border states have had to bear. Until Abbott started transporting immigrants into cities controlled by Democrats, the Democrats turned a blind eye to the challenge of effectively managing a relentless stream of humanity coming across our southern border. Mayor Adams and Governor Hochul, once forced to share the burden - in conjunction with other legislators from similar destinations around the nation - managed to get the President to take more aggressive action in dealing with the situation. The President, for his part, had been working on implementing various approaches to managing the immigration issue. Today, because of the efforts of Abbott, Adams, Hochul and others, the President and the nation are on their way toward solving the problem, which is how to effectively manage the influx of immigrants, in such a manner that we can continue to benefit from immigration as the huge asset / resource that it has always been for our nation. As my father used to tell me, democracy may be messy, and take a while to work, but it's still the best system we have been able to figure out.

Preparing for the Interview - In Search of a Story Angle

The immigrant story, to be sure, is and will continue to be an important story in itself. But that said, it's not a story I thought I could add much to via an interview with the Mayor, other than what I just provided to you above. The crime story I had covered earlier this year, in a prior collaboration with the Mayor's Office of Ethnic & Community Media, where I reported on an event they had hosted on the Mayor's Gun Violence Prevention Task Force and which I had supplemented with my own research. The education / public schools story I haven't yet had the time to update myself on what's going on there, following the disruptive turbulence brought on by the CoVid pandemic. And as covering educational performance is complicated, I decided to leave that subject for another day. Thus, I decided that doing a hard news interview with the Mayor on the top issues of the day as described above, wasn't really going to add much to what folks may have already read or heard.

Hence, my search for a different kind of a Mayoral interview story continued.

Preparing for the Interview - Deciding to do a Personal Profile of the Mayor

In late September, Famod contacted me, asking for a list of four topics I wanted to discuss with the Mayor. It was at this time that my thoughts were beginning to take shape. I told him that I wanted to do an interview along the lines of a story Gay Talese had done for Esquire Magazine in April 1966, which was entitled 'Frank Sinatra has a Cold'. I, of course, explained that my reference to the Talese story, was only to provide City Hall with the notion that I was trying to do something a bit different, by trying to do a profile story on the Mayor, that differed from the other stories done on Eric Adams in the past.

Famod didn't really respond to my comments per se, other than to ask me to send him the topics and he would look at them. So on Friday, September 29th, I sent Famod my topics, along with some context to aid the folks at City Hall in understanding what I was trying to do, since they had already told me that nobody else had approached them with a story idea like this.

The photo at right shows the cover of Esquire Magazine, featuring the Gay Talese story done about him back in April 1966.

Preparing for the Interview - Something Different

In my missive to City Hall, I explained to them that I found Mayor Adams to be a unique person - either a one of kind, or first of a kind, NYC Mayor. In my research, some of the journalists from some of the most respected magazines, expressed some difficulty in getting to know / getting to understand the Mayor. And, for my money - other than the NY Times, the Washington Post, PBS News / Documentaries & a few other newspapers - the magazine journalists are the few remaining real journalists in the nation. So that they were finding it challenging to wrap their heads around who Eric Adams is, led me to believe that I was on the right trail.

Researching Eric Adams' Life & Background - A Few Things to Keep in Mind

To begin with, in all politics, there is the age old question of what's perception and what's reality. President Kennedy's father, Joseph Kennedy, who in his time was one of the ultimate insiders, told his kids, "... It's not what you are that counts. It's what people think you are ...". Keep this perception / reality concept in mind, because unfortunately we're living in interesting times [the Chinese curse]. So, if you rely on the corporate media for your view / understanding of what's going on - you might not be clueless - but you also won't be well informed. Corporate TV news outlets have been disinvesting in real news for decades. Hence, while most of the teleprompter readers you see on TV have good diction, don't seem to have a genuine understanding as to what life is really like for most New Yorkers. TV news is a lot like web click bait: they sensationalize the news - instead of reporting it - in order to generate their ratings and revenue.

Eric Adams, the Mayoral candidate, did such a good job of positioning himself as the law enforcement Mayor, that it was difficult to see beyond that image of him, to obtain a more complete picture of him. Adams was a former Captain of the NYPD, and yet he asserted his independence from the NYPD, by founding '100 Blacks in Law Enforcement that Care'. This group was organized to help the NYPD hold officers to account when they harmed or killed someone without due cause, and it worked to provide economic assistance to impoverished communities. Keep this Officer Eric Adams' non-violent social justice effort in mind, because this is one of the keys to unlocking a more complete picture of the Mayor.

Police officers are generally enlisted to enforce the law and the existing order, while community activists fight for the social justice and civil liberties that are guaranteed to all in the U.S. Constitution, but which have, in reality, been denied, at least in part, to some groups - like people of color, women and members of the LGBTQ community. So, while what police officers do, does not prevent them from fighting for the rights of various groups, as guardians of the existing order, they don't often assume the role of civil rights activists. Thus, I believe that historically-speaking, it's pretty rare to see someone assume both roles, as Eric Adams did while a member of the NYPD.

There's a lot of interesting, even sensational, anecdotal information about the Mayor out there. These days, stories like images, can easily be manipulated, distorted and hyped to generate ratings or pageviews, but that may not necessarily inform the reader / viewer. These distortions might be believable, if only because there isn't any coherent story out there, that contextualizes Eric Adams' life.

For example Eric Adams was a D-student, before he was diagnosed as dyslexic, which wasn't caught until Eric Adams' first year of college. For those who don't know, dyslexia is, " ... Dyslexia is a learning difficulty that primarily affects the skills involved in accurate and fluent word reading and spelling. Characteristic features of dyslexia are difficulties in phonological awareness, verbal memory and verbal processing speed ..." [source: British Dyslexia Association]. After identifying the handicap, Adams reportedly went on to become a solid performing student, graduating second in his class at the NYPD Police Academy. Another example was that Eric Adams was a poor kid caught stealing, but who eventually grew up to become a Captain of the NYPD. Keep the Eric Adams life contradictions in mind, as we move forward, because it's these contradictions about his life, that make it challenging for journalists to accurately portray / understand the man.

Researching Adams' Life - His Mentors

And then there were the mentors of Eric Adams. The Reverend Herbert Daughtry and Deputy Police Commissioner Jack Maple. The first is credited with steering Adams into the NYPD, and the second is an NYPD officer who some believe influenced Mayor Adams data-driven management style. In time, I found a third mentor, and by far and away likely the most significant one, Dorothy Adams - Eric Adams mother.

Dorothy Adams must have been an incredible woman. She was a cleaning woman, a single mother of six children, who reared her children with scarce resources. From what I can gather from my research, and also from watching / covering the Mayor, she apparently succeeded in instilling certain values in her children, including valuing the importance of family, as well as imbuing them with a strong moral compass, which for her son Eric, manifested itself in his nearly life long struggle for civil rights.

In keeping with the Gay Talese model of a profile, I told Famod and the folks at City Hall, that I was also interested in inquiring about the Mayor's family life, mostly about his early years and growing up in Brooklyn and Queens, recognizing that the Mayor could always opt out of answering questions abouit his personal life that he might not want to share.

There's a Lot More Depth to Eric Adams than Meets the Eye

They say that still waters run deep. And while I wouldn't characterize the Mayor as a 'still water' man, I do think there's a level of complexity about him that has been near totally missed by the corporate media. They seem to publish and broadcast their reports, without understanding the meaning within them.

Like most New Yorkers my perception of the Mayor mostly came from how he presented himself during the Mayoral campaign of 2021. Candidate Adams presented himself as a law and order moderate Democrat, with decades of experience in police work with the NYPD, and another 16 years as a state senator and borough president. These labels and titles were emblazoned in my mind about who the Mayor was, until this year when I actually started covering events attended by him or his administration. Over the course of this past year, I began to realize that Adams' time with the NYPD was only a part of the story, and while representing quite a significant portion of his life, it provides a very incomplete picture of him, and overshadows the other dimensions of him.

Earlier this year, I attended a press conference, organized by Famod Konneh and his boss Jose Bayona, who is the Executive Director of the Mayor's Office of Ethnic and Community Media. At the conference the Adams Administration presented what they were doing to reduce crime in the city, through the Gun Violence Prevention Task Force [GVPTF]. The approach they had taken, the work they had done, and their holistic vision and effort to root out the socio / economic / psychological / and community factors contributing to the making of criminals, represented the latest in the social scientific approach to policing / law enforcement / community management. To top it off, the people they had recruited to lead the effort weren't just seasoned practicioners of what they were preaching, and they were also passionate about making a difference - because what they were doing was going to do even more than just save lives - they were going to help people create good lives / better lives for themselves. I came away from the conference very impressed, and that seldom happens.

This experience, along with another press event prior to that, began to alter my perception of the Mayor, from that of a police officer turned legislator, to someone who is much more than that. It was sometime around the Gun Violence Prevention Task Force press event, that Famod and I began talking about a one on one interview with the Mayor.

The photo at right shows a page in the report put together by the Gun Violence Prevention Task Force, which seemed to be very data rich, and take socially scientific approach to reducing / eradicating crime in NYC.

Eric Adams Early Years & Family History

My research carried me back into Eric Adams' early years. I picked up some context and colorful anecdotal tales about his youth. The context includes the following: His father was reportedly a butcher, with alcohol abuse issues, who was largely absent from playing any major role in raising Adams and his siblings. Adams was the fourth of six children, with three brothers and two sisters. One of his brothers was appointed to an Adams Administration post, at the very beginning of Adams' Mayoralty. Adams mother was a cleaning woman, who somehow managed to save enough money to purchase a home in Queens, when Adams was eight years old. Adams has told the story about living with housing insecurity as a youth, wherein he and his brother would bring a change of clothes to school, because of the uncertainty of getting back into their home after school.

The anecdotal colorful tales are as follows: Adams and his brother ran errands for a prostitute, who at some juncture failed to pay them, so they stole her TV. The Mayor was a squeegee guy for a while. Adams and his brother were beaten by the members of the NYPD, before a black officer intervened on their behalf. The colorful anedotes don't end here, but rather continue on through most of his life, in as much as I can tell, because he still has ties / roots from the neighborhoods from whence he came. Eric Adams life has been filled with a panoply of characters that only a city like NYC can provide. And that can be only be managed by someone who has the broad personal flexibility and social bandwidth as Eric Adams.

The Four Topics I Chose to Discuss with NYC Mayor Adams

On Tuesday, October 10, 2023 Famod of the MOECM and I finalized the four topics I planned to discuss with the Mayor. We settled on the following: 1) The Mayor's Personal Story / Development - primarily about the Mayor's familial relationships, to the extent he wished to share, 2) The Mayor's Cultural Influences - specifically as it relates to music, 3) The Mayor's Personal Cultural Influences - specifically as it relates to film / TV and historical figures / role models, and 4) The Mayor's Professional Development - specifically as it relates to his mentors like Reverend Herbert Daughtry and NYPD Deputy Commissioner Jack Maple.

Now that I've briefed you on my research, it's time to recount the interview.

A 20 Minute Zoom Conference with the Mayor in the NYC Limo

On Friday, October 20, 2023, I called into the Zoom meeting in advance of the interview to be sure everything was working properly. Jose Bayona, Executive Director of the Mayor's Office of Ethnic & Community Media, greeted me. I was told the Mayor would be along shortly and that everything was working correctly. Soon thereafter, the Mayor appeared, Jose disappeared, and the interview began. I had been informed in advance that our conversation would be recorded at City Hall.

Prelude to the Interview - A Weary Week of Protests

As we began, I thought I detected a bit in the weariness in the Mayor's voice. I suspect he was a bit preoccupied with other matters, as this had been a particularly hectic week, with both pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups protesting at various sites around the city. While following the news during the week, I found that for the most part, both sides of protesters conducted themselves in accordance with the law. Hence, the NYPD succeeded in doing its job, and no big crisis erupted - although some arrests were made. But we didn't delve into this, per se, as it wasn't on the docket.

Mayor Eric Adams is shown in the photo at right in the Mayoral limo. I believe he was crossing one of the interborough bridges at the time, which you can see out the window in the background.

Mass Media - Sensational Distortion & Lack of Diversity

The Mayor started by telling me that he knows most government officials grouse a bit about their coverage by the media. He told me that on that count, he wasn't any different than his predecessors. He said that some journalists render distorted account of events, which highlight the sensational, instead of recounting what actually happened.

Although this wasn't what I wanted to talk about, I went with it a bit, and asked him for a couple of examples of what he was talking about. The Mayor told me that about two weeks after he took office, a newspaper journalist sensationalized a story about his attendance at a basketball game at Madison Square Garden on Martin Luther King Day in January 2022. The Mayor had walked out onto the court, gave a short speech and then departed. He told me that he was generally cheered by the audience, but there was someone who was intoxicated - who booed and swore at him - and the booing and swearing became the headline and thus the story. That one person, acting out, changed how folks who weren't at the event, would perceive it thereafter.

As a second example, the Mayor said one of the corporate media outlets sent a reporter to interview him. The Mayor was disappointed in the reporter, because they hadn't done their homework and didn't know a thing about Eric Adams' role in founding the organization, 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement that Care. In my research I had found that this organization, which was nicknamed 100 Blacks, was a keystone initiative of Adams as a member of the NYPD in the mid nineties, which was designed to help prevent abusive policing by the NYPD, vis-a-vis of people of color, and to lobby for investment in poorer neighborhoods.

The Mayor went on to say that the corporate journalism pool just isn't really that diverse. He went on to explain to me what he meant, which was that the people in corporate journalism don't come from a variety of life experiences and circumstances, and many didn't have a lot of knowledge about life in the neighborhoods of NYC. Because of this lack of diversity in the media pool, its more challenging for the Mayor to communicate with them, because they don't have knowledge of the environment / context in which he's operating, and in some cases they don't have much knowledge of the NYC environment as a whole. To address this diversity deficiency in journalism, the Mayor said he had invested some NYC money in [CUNY?] journalism education.

We decided to move on to the four topics slated for the interview.

The Adams Family Snapshot

I started by asking him about his family, meaning the family he grew up in. I'm not sure I got this right, but I believe he told me that Sandra is the oldest sibling, followed by Faye, then an older brother who moved to North Carolina, then the Mayor who is followed by two younger brothers, Leroy and Bernard. In my research I found that Bernard had been hired by the Mayor in a law enforcement capacity at the beginning of the Adams Administration in January 2022, initially paying Bernard a salary of $200,000 plus, but then dialing it back to $1, before Bernard eventually resigned in the Spring of 2023.

I asked him if his father was largely absent from playing a role in the family. The Mayor said yes, his father was largely absent from playing a role in their household and that his Mother was the key figure in their home. I asked about the roles played by other family members, as in large families the parents are oftentimes unable to take care of all of the kids, so the siblings step up and assume some of the parenting roles. The Mayor said that his two older sisters played influential roles in making the household work. I inquired about whether either of his parents were still alive and he said no, that his father had died sometime ago, and that his mother, Dorothy, had died in late March of 2021, just months before her son became the Democratic nominee for Mayor. The Democratic nominee for NYC Mayor is something close to being Mayor-elect, as over the past 75 plus years it has meant almost certain victory [excepting Bloomberg and Giuliani during this time period].

The Adams Early Years - A Large, Struggling, Improverished, but Generally Unified Family

I asked the Mayor about the story of him bringing extra clothes to school, due to the uncertainty of getting back into their home, after school. I had initially thought this was while his family was renting, but it was not. It was after the Adams had bought their home in Queens. The Mayor was eight years old at the time. I perceived a bit of discomfort by the Mayor in handling these questions, which I found perfectly understandable. Eric Adams didn't grow up in a Norman Rockwell painting. And it now made sense to me as to why I couldn't find the story I'm trying to write, 'The Eric Adams Story', in my research - because the Mayor had not yet told it.

Community Activist Plays Significant Role Model in Eric Adams' Life - 'Cliffy Glover'

We moved onto talking about the Mayor's mentors and role models when he was growing up. I first asked the Mayor about Reverend Daughtry, who reportedly guided the young Eric Adams into a career in the NYPD. The Mayor said he had met Reverent Daughtry when he was about 17 years old and stayed [more or less] in touch ever since. He said that Daughtry was an activist preacher, along the lines of Reverend Jesse Jackson, and that Daughtry played a role in the 1980's and 1990's, that has similarities to the role played by Al Sharpton today. The Mayor said that Daughtry brought a number of organizations together under one umbrella to form the National Black United Front, which played a role in fighting police abuse of black and brown communities, and which also organized to secure resources for the community as well.

Was Daughtry still alive I inquired? Yes, the Mayor replied. When I started to work writing this story, I looked up Reverend Daughtry on the web, and sure enough, the Reverend Daughtry may be 92 years young, but he's still alive and still civically engaged.

Now here's the story that's not yet been reported, or at least not been reported very well. And that is that Eric Adams was a community activist, starting at age 17, when he got involved with Reverend Daughtry. Daughtry was trying to steer black and brown communities into non-violent community building by investing in their youth, communities and to assert their rights for equal protection under the law, as provided for in the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constution.

The photo above right shows a photo of Clifford Glover, who the Mayor mentioned as 'Cliffy Glover' in our conversation. I didn't get a chance to inquire whether the Mayor knew him, as at the time of the interview I didn't have any context on him. But, as mentioned, Glover was only two years younger than Eric Adams at the time of the shooting, and Glover lived in the same neighborhood as Adams.

The Black & Brown Traumas that Shaped Eric Adams' Activism in NYC in the 1970's

It was at this point that the Mayor started recollecting some of the black and brown people who had been shot by the police. The first name he mentioned was Cliffy Glover. As these names and cases preceded my time [in NYC], I was not familiar with them, so after the interview, while writing this story, I looked up Cliffy Glover.

Wikipedia stated the following, " ...Clifford Glover was a 10-year-old African American boy who was fatally shot by Thomas Shea, an on-duty, undercover policeman, on April 28, 1973. Glover's death, and Shea's later acquittal for a murder charge, led to riots in the South Jamaica section of Queens, New York...".

I could only imagine the impact that such a traumatic event would have on the other members of the black and brown community, such as a very young Mayor Adams who lived in the same neighborhood, and was only two years older than Cliffy Glover was at the time of his death.

The Mayor mentioned another person, Arthur Miller, with whom I was not familiar. Again I looked him up after our interview. Arthur Miller was killed by a member of the NYPD, in what is now an illegal chokehold. Some refer to him as the first Eric Garner, and this was in July 1978. Eric Adams would have been about 17 at the time and it was at that age that Erica Adams remembers meeting Reverend Daughtry and entering into a mentored relationship that positively influenced his life.

The photo above right, shows that a street was named in honor of Clifford Glover earlier this year, on the 50th anniversary of his shooting. The community and Mayor Adams did not forget, and commemorated his memory with the street sign.

Eric Adams is a Non-Violent Community Activist - Arthur Miller

Like those who had gone before them, both Reverend Daughtry and Mayor Adams rose to the occasion, by controlling their frustration, and channeling the energy of their anger into a non-violent effort to effect positive change. There's something heroic about such self control, and it is an important character trait of all successful non-violent leaders, who focus that energy toward achieving the greater good.

While my interview with the Mayor was only 20 minutes, I managed to get enough information from him, to begin to develop a more coherent profile of him, than I'd been able to find anywhere else. These people, the victims and the mentors, all had a profound effect on the Mayor while he was growing up, and it's that community activism branch of Eric Adams' character that gets lost because it's overshadowed by the fact that Adams was a member of the NYPD. I imagine it's also why he was disappointed when a corporate media, City Hall reporter who interviewed him, didn't know about '100 Blacks in Law Enforcement who Care', because Eric Adams' community activism is a significant part of who the Mayor is.

Mayor Adams cites Ghandi as an inspirational figure, and he quotes Nelson Mandela on his Twitter page. These aren't fanciful references to prior non-violent leaders - they're heartfelt references to the philosophical / non-violent words of wisdom that these two inspirational figures left behind.

The photo above right shows a newspaper clipping about the chokehold death of Arthur Miller, who was from Crown Heights Brooklyn. Miller's daughter has erected a website and helped start a foundation in Miller's honor. For details see - https://arthurmillerjradnff.org/resources/

NYPD Deputy Commissioner Influence on Adams' Management Approach

I inquired about the Mayor's relationship with Jack Maple who the Deputy Police Commissioner for Police Chief Bratton. Maple is generally credited with starting CompuStat which is the NYPD database, used to track crime in NYC and it's used for a variety of other purposes too, such as evaluating performance and analyzing crime. Specifically I asked if the Mayor ever worked directly for him. The answer was no, but the Mayor said he interacted with Maple in a role he had within a data processing unit. The Mayor said he provided Maple's unit with data processed in the system.

The Mayor also said that he found former Mayor Dinkins and Bill Lynch to be positive role models. Dinkins was NYC's first African American Mayor. And Bill Lynch, was a political consultant and a Deputy Mayor under David Dinkins in the early 1990's. The Mayor said both men were inspirational.

My Exclusive 20 Minute Interview with the Mayor Approaches the End

And my Last Question was about Two TV Shows

Jose Bayona appeared briefly, telling us we had a minute left for the interview and that I should wrap up with my last question.

So I changed topics and asked the Mayor if he had ever watched House of Cards or Person of Interest. I asked the Mayor about these two TV series because one was about governing and the other was about policing in New York City ... and I enjoyed watching both of them. The Mayor said that he had not had the time to watch either series.

The call ended fairly abruptly, so I emailed Famod and Jose asking them to thank the Mayor for his time, since I had been unable to do so before the call ended.

Sometime before the end of the year I'll be pitching the Mayor and the MOECM to schedule a follow on interview. And after I secure a commitment from them, I'll begin working on Part II.

In the meantime, I'll wrap up by mentioning that I learned a lot about the Mayor in putting this report together, and feel I have a deeper level of understanding about who he is. I hope by reading this, you feel the same.

Have a good week.