Thursday’s Headlines: Welcome to the Mayoral Race, Eric Adams Edition

12:05 AM EST on November 19, 2020

Mayoral candidate and Brooklyn Beep Eric Adams hands out literature in the subway. File Photo

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams announced his run for mayor on Wednesday with a poignant biographical video that focused tightly on a message of police reform and public safety. The campaign advertisement tied vignettes from Adams’s boyhood growing up Black and poor in South Jamaica — as teens, he and his brother were arrested and beaten by police — with his decision to join the NYPD and fight brutality from within it.

Today, I'm sharing my story like I’ve never told it before:

It starts right here in NYC, growing up poor & on the brink of eviction. Then at 15, I was the victim of police brutality -- but instead of accepting things as they were, I was determined to change them. pic.twitter.com/Y4GyCNxIdD
— Eric Adams (@ericadamsfornyc) November 18, 2020

Adams sought to position himself as a strong Black voice on public safety, though perhaps as a law-and-order voice and certainly not a "Defund" voice like others in the race. “The fight can’t only be in the streets; it must be also in the agencies that patrol the streets. That is how we change policing,” he says in the video — segueing to the uptick in gang shootings.

Left unsaid was Adams’s position on another pressing public-safety question: traffic violence (and it didn't help that Adams touted endorsements from car-loving Council Members Daneek Miller and Laurie Cumbo, and also was preparing to meet on Thursday with a clergy group headed by former Council Member [and unrepentant homophobe] Ruben Diaz Sr.).

.@ericadamsfornyc rolling out a string of current and former Black and Latino elected officials -- @IDaneekMiller @cmlauriecumbo @EdTowns --from BK and Queens so far for his mayoral announcement.
— Jeff Mays (@JeffCMays) November 18, 2020

But we expect that the beep, himself a cyclist, will (like Carlos Menchaca and, with hope, unlike placard user Maya Wiley) take up the issue soon when he and his rivals return Streetsblog’s mayoral candidate questionnaire (hint, hint). Until then, here's the rest of Wednesday's news:

From "Trump Trains" of oversized automobiles to Joe Biden's 1967 Corvette, the latest War on Cars podcast dissected the internal-combustion symbology of the "election of our lifetimes."
NY1 joined earlier efforts by Streetsblog and other outfits in profiling the vicious behavior during protests of the NYPD's bike-mounted Strategic Response Group.
Everyone filed doomsaying stories from the lugubrious MTA board meeting:
- The Post, amNY, The Times, and the Daily News focused on service cuts.
- The Post and The News also broke out separate reports on fare and toll increases.
- TheCity examined the effect of the cuts on bus drivers.
Unlicensed buses in Chinatown are vessels for gun smuggling. (CityLimits)
The Daily News provided more details on the road-raging driver who plowed into a Flushing bakery: He uses coke, his sister says.
The Department of Transportation will hold a session on Dec. 2 with Council Member Daniel Dromm and State Sen. Jessica Ramos on the future of the open street on 34th Avenue in Jackson Heights. (Via Twitter)