Zohran Mamdani, who won the New York City mayoral election in November, provided some advice in a video monologue this week regarding interacting with agents of the United States government’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In the minute and a half video titled “Know Your Rights When Dealing With ICE” at Mamdani’s YouTube page, Mamdani, who will become mayor on January 1, provided several pieces of advice that, if employed, may protect people from abuse and harm at the hands of government agents.
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Big Brother in the Big Apple
“Big Brother is protecting you.” That is a quote from New York City Mayor Eric Adams in a Saturday article at Politico. Adams made the comment in defense of the extensive web of high-tech surveillance his city government deploys against people in America’s most populous city, as well as the mayor’s desire to expand the surveilling.
In the name of “public health,” the New York City government this week has been telling city employees to take the experimental coronavirus “vaccine” shots by Friday at 5 p.m. or be fired, or as the city government terms it, “placed on leave without pay.” Plenty of city workers of all types upset by this attack on their freedom have been taking to the streets in large numbers to protest, often admirably joined by leaders of their unions.
Apparently, New York City garbagemen upset with their mistreatment have chosen to skip days of work as well. The result, detailed in a Thursday article by Jean Lee at NBC News is trash piling up in parts of the city as regularly scheduled trash collection fails to occur.
Some state and local governments in America have, in purported efforts to counter coronavirus, become in significant ways like communist countries suppressing religious activities while promoting certain favored large-scale political demonstrations. New York City has been a prime example of this development with Mayor Bill de Blasio praising select demonstrations in the streets while shutting down religious assemblies.
People in New York City have been subjected to one of the most repressive coronavirus crackdowns in America. Included have been months-long forced closure of many businesses and extreme limitations placed on businesses that have been allowed to resume some operations during incremental scaling back of closure orders. Such government actions have decimated businesses in the city. A Sunday report by Lauren Thomas at CNBC illustrates the continuing economic destruction by describing vacancies and bankruptcies, along with a large drop in rents sought, in 16 major retail corridors of the Manhattan borough of the city.
The plummeting economy has come hand-in-hand with plummeting respect for liberty, with people in New York City having been prohibited from doing many of the things, in addition to operating or working at businesses, that people have long considered basic to living — doing daily activities outside home without wearing a mask, attending religious services, meeting friends at a bar for a beer, and taking children to a playground, for example.
Daniel McAdams has written about police on two occasions backing down in their efforts to stop children of a group of families from using playgrounds in Texas that had been designated off limits in the coronavirus crackdown. In those instances, parents discussed the restriction with police, and once with a vice mayor as well, with the police ultimately assenting to the use of the playgrounds. In the Brooklyn borough of New York City, the effort to ensure kids can use the Middleton Playground has played out differently. Catarina Moura and John Annese report at the New York Daily News that people have at least 26 times — the latest on Monday — cut off locks and chains that, in the name of countering coronavirus, have been used to prevent people from accessing a playground.
Across America over the last week large groups of people have been protesting. Many people have also crowded together rioting and looting, often with no police taking any action to stop the out-in-the-open assaults and theft. Meanwhile, in many of the same cities and towns across America businesses remain totally shut down or are legally allowed to operate only under new restrictions that make profitable functioning difficult to impossible, all in the name of countering coronavirus.
It is refreshing to see government officials across America refuse to participate in all or part of the ongoing coronavirus crackdowns. A new action in this admirable secession from the authoritarianism was taken by Eric Gonzalez, the district attorney for the New York City borough of Brooklyn. Gonzalez has chosen not to prosecute any of the 40 people police have arrested in the borough from March 17 through May 4 for violating social distancing mandates imposed in the name of countering coronavirus.
Last week, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the city had eliminated charges for phone calls made by inmates in city jails. Karen Matthews of the Associated Press reported that New York City, with this elimination of fees that had been 50 cents for the first minute and five cents for each additional minute, is the first major American city to eliminate inmates’ phone call fees.
This is a welcome move against what I described in an October of 2013 Ron Paul Institute article as “phone system monopolies that charge inmates’ families and friends exorbitant rates to communicate with their incarcerated loved ones.”