New York City, October 18— “Mayor de Blasio, you have committed a crime, a major injustice against Black and Brown people, in particular to the men at the Lucerne Hotel…You are a racist, and even worse than that guy in the White House!”
That’s what a homeless resident-leader had to say at a rally at the Mayor’s residence at Gracie Mansion, where homeless people from three temporary shelters and their supporters presented de Blasio with the “Tale of Two Cities” Award.
The Mayor wants to transfer the more than 240 mostly Black and Latin homeless men safely housed and socially distanced in the Lucerne Hotel, to a hotel in the Wall St. area. He ordered the men transferred, bowing to the demands of a handful of rich, racist businessmen and real estate owners, backed by former Mayor and top Trump confidante Rudy Giuliani.
The racist West Side Community Organization claims 10,000 followers on Facebook, but they have never put more than a handful in the street and never filed their threatened lawsuit. By bowing to the racists, de Blasio encouraged another group of rich racists in the Wall St. area to go to court to prevent the men from being moved to the Financial District. Another group has formed in Hell’s Kitchen. At best the liberal politicians cannot stop the fascists, and at worst, they are just like them, “wolves in sheep’s clothing.” It’s not just Trump! The whole racist profit system has got to go.
Today, Lucerne residents won a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) to stop the planned transfer, at least until another hearing scheduled for November 16. More than 50 UWS residents showed up to support our homeless brothers and if need be, to stop the City from moving them out before their case was heard. The City attorneys argued that the homeless men have no right to stay at the Lucerne, and no right to have a say in where they would be placed. The judge, for now, rejected both arguments.
There are about 700 homeless workers in four UWS hotels, and thousands more in 60 hotels around the city. In May 2020, there were 13,523 homeless families with 20,044 homeless children in the New York City shelter system, more than two-thirds of the homeless shelter population, and 90% are Black and Latinx. Thousands of unsheltered homeless people sleep on the streets, in the subway and in other public spaces every night. (CoalitionfortheHomeless.org).
Meanwhile, 118 billionaires increased their wealth by $77 billion during the pandemic and the Democratic Governor, Mayor, City Council and State Legislature can’t or won’t touch them. With more than a million New Yorkers out of work and tens of thousands of families facing evictions next January, homelessness will spread faster than Covid-19.
The Upper West Side Open Hearts Initiative (UWS OHI) emerged out of the anti-racist uprising this summer to defend the Lucerne residents, staging protests, marches on the Mayor’s home, and organizing all levels of support from clothing distributions to 12-step classes and more as a number of the residents suffer from substance abuse and/or mental illness.
All of the Democratic mayoral candidates, City Council members and city-wide elected officials who have come to speak at rallies and press conferences have provided no help at all as the crisis of racist poverty and homelessness deepens. Talk is cheap.
PLP has been involved in this fight from the beginning, making new friends inside and outside the temporary homeless shelter. We are in this struggle to fight the racist attacks against our most vulnerable brothers, and to build the movement for communist revolution, to end racist inequality and homelessness forever.