New York City Mayor Eric Adams came under fire this week for losing his temper at an elderly woman who complained at his town hall about a rent increase on rent-controlled apartments.
“First, if you’re going to ask a question, don’t point at me and don’t be disrespectful to me. I’m the mayor of this city and treat me with the respect that would deserve to be treated. I’m speaking to you as an adult," Adams said. “Don’t stand in front like you treated someone that’s on the plantation that you own. I’m a grown man. I walked into this room as a grown man and I’ll walk out of this room as a grown man. I answered your question – go to the next table."
It gets worse, though. According to Forward, the woman Adams was comparing to an Antebellum slave master, 84-year-old Jeanie Dubnau, is a Holocaust survivor.
"In a phone interview, Dubnau, a microbiologist on the faculty of Rutgers University, said she was born in Brussels after her parents fled Nazi Germany. They managed to survive the war in France in hiding and 'were lucky enough to come here,' to the U.S., sponsored by her mother’s uncle," reported Beth Harpaz.
"Others noted Dubnau’s long history fighting for tenants' rights," said the report. "'This woman is Jeanie Dubnau, the Co-Founder of the Riverside Edgecombe Neighborhood Association (RENA), a tenants & housing rights advocacy organization in Upper Manhattan,' tweeted Juan Rosa, national director of civic engagement at the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials."
Adams, a former police officer and Brooklyn Borough President who was elected mayor of New York in 2021, has frequently come under fire for erratic and controversial statements, including a claim earlier this year that mass shootings are caused by a lack of prayer in school.
