June 4, 2024 NYC Office of the Mayor
Tony Rogers: I have the honor to introduce Mayor Eric Adams.
Mayor Eric Adams: Hey brother, how are you? Good to be on with you. And I always got my tie crooked so it’s good to see it, right?
Rogers: Hey, brother, I'd rather for your tie to be crooked. We can always straighten that out.
Mayor Adams: I was looking at your income video, and it just gave me an idea. That little snippet that I saw showed the fullness of you, from your martial art to your meditation.
Rogers: Healing.
Mayor Adams: Healing. All of that. People sometimes, they see a one-dimensional approach and don't realize that there's a fullness to us. I may be the mayor, but I'm also a dad. I'm a son. I meditate every morning when I get up. I pray every morning when I get up. I do my breathing exercises. I focus on interacting with people. Your video just really, I told my team here, one of my guys, Noah, that we need to do a little snippet that would just show the fullness of being a mayor and what that means in the most important city in America.
Rogers: Soul City can probably help do that. That's important, because people tend to know me from Harlem Week and the great Harlem Chamber of Commerce and all of that. Just like you, I got so many calls when they found out that you were a vegetarian. They saw the show, and they said, wow, he's a vegetarian. I said, not only is he a vegetarian, is that before he went that way, he almost died. Went blind, was overweight. He looks so good now. You know what? You should have seen him a couple of years ago when we were hanging out in Brooklyn.
Mayor Adams: I like to call it plant-based, where you want to get as many whole foods in your diet. When you see people eating poorly, it's really not their fault. We have been bombarded with misinformation. When you think about, as you stated, doctors told me I was going to be blind in a year. I was going to lose some fingers and toes. I had an ulcer, high blood pressure, high cholesterol. The whole American package.
Just simply changing my diet, man. My vision came back in like three weeks. My ulcer went away. My nerve damage in my hands and feet went away. I lost some challenging pounds. It was just food. Folks need to know, because they were telling me that, listen, your mom was diabetic, so Eric, it’s hereditary. It was never my DNA. It was my dinner, I changed my health. It's about educating people to that. You're right, That's why it's important to me.
Rogers: Every year — I had to stop during the pandemic — I have a Harlem Holistic Wellness Week. I use all of those things, the chamber and all of that stuff, to promote holistic wellness groups. We're partnering now with the Uptown Grand Central. They just did a wonderful event. There's so many wellness groups that are in Upper Manhattan. All over, the pandemic had a great influence on people wanting to see how they could stay healthy.
Mayor Adams: Right. The optimum burden, I'm writing that down, is wellness. Because we often think about health, physical. Just as we have a body, we also have anatomy of our spirit. The question is, you can't have obesity in either area. If you are obese spiritually, it's going to impact your mind. Mental health is crucial. I would love to tap in some of those wellness groups. We need to build this whole city of wellness.
Rogers: We can do this. Matter of fact, this is another conversation. I was so impressed about what the Uptown Grand Central did. I wanted to partner with them and have some wellness workshops, even at the Renaissance Hotel.
Before I let you, this is your show. I don't want to use it. However, as president of the Harlem Tourism Board, there are a couple of things that I had to say or else my board would not have let me do that. He said, you're talking to the mayor. We're trying to get the Harlem hospitality and tourism thing going. You got to say a couple of things.
One is, there is a company in Harlem, Klub Cart Tours. They are the first company that has put together an electric club cart tour operating operation. They are going to be working out of a new Marriott Hotel and take people downtown and uptown in a different way with Klub Cart Tours. We're talking to DOT now to talk about how we can get tours going through the park, which would increase some of the opportunities, jobs, and the like.
The last thing, the last commercial, is I sent Noah a deck. One of the young ladies who are executives for Soul City lives in Far Rockaway. She's putting together a program pilot. I didn't know Far Rockaway had the largest boardwalk in the country, but they're putting together a program to provide digital information about the swimming, when you should go in the water. I know that one of the things I want you to talk about is now we're going to get a lot more lifeguards. This digital thing is an interesting one.
Those are the two things that I had to do. When you are able to talk to the mayor, I have a whole list. I said, no, I can't do that because he won't want to come back on. There are two things that I really had to do. Of course, the classic. Nelson Vails is a 1984 Olympic champion, cycling, silver medalist. Every year, I don't know, I don’t know whether about this, but every year people come from around the world to ride around Marcus Garvey Park because it's the same measurements as one of the Olympic courses.
Nelson was a messenger. He used to ride this thing. David Walker, a police officer, Community Affairs, started this about 52 years ago. He was riding and beating all of the champions, all of the international racers. They said, who's this guy? He says, well, I ride across 42nd Street every day. This is simple to me. He's going to be around. It's on Father's Day every year. Think about it sometimes. Ride with a champion, ride with an Olympic person. Perhaps those are other things that you might want to think about. Let's talk about some of the things.
Mayor Adams: I want to know, this is on Father's Day?
Rogers: Father's Day around Marcus Garvey Park every year. Matter of fact, I have coming on, and I'm going to send the tape of the second part of the show. You can hear a lot about it. It's a wonderful program. Do things for kids. Create exercise. We have, sometimes I ride.
We try to get different older people. We have Black Girls Ride. That's a national program. They're here. Rashid Bahati, that's one of the largest Black cycling groups. He'll be on actually right after we finish with you. As well as Lisa Gillespie, who's the Black Girls rider.
Major Taylor. I don't know what you know about cycling, about Major Taylor, I'm going to write about him. He was one of the best Olympians, one of the best riders in the 1800s. He went around, he was the Michael Jordan before Michael Jordan, before all of this, when cycling was the major entity in the world. One of the best riders in cycling at that time was Major Taylor. Anyway, you should look him up.
Let's talk about, Mr. Mayor, there's so many things that you're doing. I just have to commend you again. I was looking at the press conference today. I was just looking at the people who were answering the questions. Not only did they look like the people who basically represent New York. They lived, there was one lady was talking about the housing. She says, I grew up in the housing. I have to commend you. I don't, I've been for 50 years dealing with different administrations. This is the first administration that has had the type of diversity in leadership positions and women of color in leadership positions that ever was in New York City. I'm using this platform to make sure that people know about that. This is your show, tell us what you want us to know, Mr. Mayor.
Mayor Adams: You're right, because visualizations are important. That is why we do those off-topics press conferences so people can see, sometimes you think of the mayor.
This city is currently being run by women for the first time. Five deputy mayors. The first Filipina deputy mayor. The first East Indian deputy mayor. The first Trinidadian deputy mayor. The first woman of color to be a first deputy mayor. When you look at the first chief advisor of color. Only the second chief of staff of City Hall, Camille is the second one. The first one was under my mentor, David Dinkins. Look at the fact, the first police commissioner of women of color that was here. The first fire commissioner was a woman. The first deputy commissioner of Intelligence is a woman.
When you look at that, it was not important for me only to put women in places. We had to show the results of running a city of this level of complexity and we are doing that. In spite of highlighting the worst things that ever happened in a city of this size every day. If it bleeds, it leads. We got that. That's just the nature of the beast. When you dig through the layers, it is unbelievable what their personal narratives and lives have allowed them to use their positions of power to impact the lives of others.
As Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer stated, she said, listen, when I talk about subsidized housing, I'm not talking about it from some place of Ivy Tower. I grew up on it.
Rogers: She grew up on it, yes.
Mayor Adams: When you hear Sheena Wright talk about her personal story and what her mom's role was around fighting against HIV and AIDS in the Black community, it's a real narrative of having her here. Deputy Mayor Williams-Isom, she talked about our personal journey of dealing with breast cancer. Now she's in charge of Health and Human Services. When you dig into the narratives of our leadership, you're seeing not only do they look like the city, but they have the stories of those who are in the city.
Rogers: Including yourself, Mr. Mayor, which is interesting. I was astounded today to hear the numbers, the increase of numbers based on this whole border issue or this immigration issue as relates to the numbers. When you first came into office, that you had to manage as far as with the shelters, and it was like triple the numbers that are here now.
Of all of the things that you've been able to do, to be able to keep the city running at some level with all of those thousands and thousands and thousands of people coming in every day, to be able to have to deal with them. That's a hell of a task, and I have to thank your people for doing that.
Mayor Adams: And just think about it for a moment. People think that, okay, the border crisis has settled. No, it has not. We're just managing it. To get roughly 5,000 people a month, 1,000 a week to find housing for them, we've received over 200,000 people. That's the size of cities. It's over 1.5 the size of Albany.
To be able to do that, look at other cities, and you see what's happening in other cities. I take my hat off to my colleagues across the entire country, because they are fighting to get the help they need. Here's the real danger, Brother Rogers, is that we saw an example of that danger of the migrant and asylum seeker who shot two police officers. He's in the country. He can't work because he's not allowed due to federal rules. He can't enroll in college and get any subsidized college tuition. He can't do all the basic things. What else are they going to do?
Think about this. People got to eat. Unfortunately, some people do illegal things to eat. There's nothing more dangerous than a desperate person. If we don't get this issue resolved and make sure that we manage our border, give the funding to our local municipalities like Chicago and Denver and others and New York, this problem can continue to grow at a very dangerous rate in our country.
Rogers: I, again, New York is a city so nice they named it twice, but I don't think any other city or any other mayor would be able to have been able to deal with what you're dealing with and look as good as you do now. You still got that swagger. You're not looking for a bridge to jump off or anything like that. That attests to some of your perseverance. You're right. That has to be done.
One of the other things that you said at the press conference that I thought was interesting was your take on the, there's so many of the smoke shops that are illegal, that you’re trying to close down. Your thought that there probably is some sort of organized method in order to allow for that to happen. That was the first time I heard that.
Mayor Adams: Yes. What's interesting, that's a uniqueness I bring to the role as mayor, the many lives that I had to live. One of the most important lives is the role as a member of the Police Department for 22 years. You tend to have this sixth sense. As I said, there were outside agitators at these demonstrations. Before we were able to actualize it, I knew something was not right. It turned out that I was correct in my analysis.
That's the same thing with the cannabis issue. You can look and see all the products are the same.
Rogers: You wouldn't know the difference, right?
Mayor Adams: Right. It's like, it's the McDonald's of illegal cannabis. Everybody's selling a Big Mac. Then you need to say, wait a minute, we need to, somebody's dealing with the same flow. Just recently, two weeks ago, we saw at Brooklyn Navy Yard, we were able to find a large cache of these products, over a million dollars of different products.
It seems to be that there's a professional operation around this with a distribution mechanism that's supplying these locations. We have to go to the source of this and make sure that we not only close down the illegal shops that we're doing, we've inspected close to 500, closed down over 300. We know that we have to also stop the supply as well as the demand.
Rogers: It's like picking up water with your hands sometimes. It's a tough job. As I had mentioned to a number of people, the president of the United States probably does not have as many headaches on a daily basis, because he has a lot of people who, out there in front of him. You get hit, and you got to deal with a lot of that stuff and everything. It's the whole joke about shine, you're doing fine, but you miss one stroke, and it's mine. That's the way they deal with you.
Mayor Adams: It's interesting, as you do the analogy of the president of the United States, the president of the United States, or any president is not touchable, you can't reach out and touch them. Since I don't hide out in City Hall, I'm in the streets, I'm on the subway, I'm in reach, I was walking down 116th Street and in Harlem the other day, I guess last night…
Rogers: I got the sighting, we got the sightings that you were in town.
Mayor Adams: It's that feel that, people, when you are hurting, if you can't reach the person that you can complain to, you have a tendency never to know it. Since I'm in such close proximity, people share their anger. You know what, no matter what happens in the city, they don't say, hey, the president dropped the ball. They say the mayor, like people think I'm in charge… They think I'm in charge of congestion pricing. I'm not in charge of congestion pricing. I don't control the MTA. I don't… Brother stopped me a couple of weeks ago, months ago, and said, I'm getting a divorce, it's your fault. I'm blamed for everything, brother.
Rogers: And that's why I'm so happy that you agreed to give us some opportunities. I know you do some things with WHCR. I know my cousin gives you some, the Harlem Community News. Because we have to protect ourselves. It's up to us to make sure we can't complain. If you are under fire, we're under fire. That's the way I have to look at it. That's the way any other nationality, any group would look at it. You know how that goes. You say something about the wrong people, you lose your job.
Mayor Adams: Let me tell you something. Nothing is worse than people running the same playbook on you, and you fall for the same play. This is David Dinkins' playbook. Oh, he dressed too fancy. He's out too much at night. He can't, he's not smart enough to run the city. David, Mayor Dinkins turned around the city. It was his Safe City, Safe Streets that started bringing down crime. The economy started reversing.
But we bought into the narrative, and we started pushing that narrative. What I'm saying to folks, and I'm very front and center about it, listen, don't be duped by the same playbook. Even trying to give the rumor or the belief that the speaker and I are at war with each other. We're not at war. We disagree. Families disagree, and we should be mature enough politically to say, when I disagree with you, I disagree on the issue. I don't disagree with you on our ability to land two budgets, our ability to cycle us out of COVID, to deal with 200,000 migrants and asylum seekers.
You're seeing the success of the first woman of color as a speaker and the second person of color to be the mayor. You're seeing us navigating the most difficult city in the country, if not the globe. We should be lifting that up and not allowing people to change the narrative on us.
Rogers: Which is why I love to have you on my show, Mr. Mayor, because somebody has to see it. Believe me, a lot of people will see this. We send this all over the place so that they can see you, just like you indicated that piece on me, because people can see more as to who I am, not the Tony Rodgers, whoever. That's why I always tell them, Tony is not real. William Anthony Rodgers, my mother used to always say, Tony is not on your birth certificate.
Mayor Adams: I love that.
Rogers: That's war. That's where the art of war comes from.
Mayor Adams: We're excited because I know you got other guests, but as you indicated, we're really excited that we've opened up the NYCHA waitlist. Several hundred thousand have already applied. It just goes to show you we need housing. That's why our City of Yes initiative is so important.
We're also doing these job programs, opening it up for New York City jobs. We want to hire people. We cut Black unemployment rate substantially. It was one time, it was four times the rate as whites. We cut it in half. We're below 8 percent for the first time since 2019. If we give people jobs, we would give them hope and opportunity. Dignity is spelled J-O-B.
Rogers: Again, thank you so much for your time. I will send a copy of this to Noah so you can learn about my next guest and the biking. That's a wonderful program that you should be aware of. At some point, Nelson Vails, who's the Olympian, says, we could ride with the mayor. We could give him a bike and a helmet and go on.
Don't forget the Harlem Renaissance Hotel. We have to invite you up there just to see it and to understand what's happening up in Harlem and Harlem tourism. Please let me know who is in charge of tourism in your administration. I'll get that from Noah because we want to connect with him, okay?
Mayor Adams: Love it. Love it. Thank you, brother. Be well.
Rogers: Thank you. Be well. Stay the way you are, brother. We're behind you. Keep that smile. Keep that approach because you do have a lot of people who got your back.
Mayor Adams: Feel it every day. All right, my brother. Be well. Take care.
Rogers: Thank you.
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