Mayor Zohran Mamdani used his Martin Luther King Jr. Day speech at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) on Monday to push back against warnings that his plan for higher taxes on wealthy New Yorkers would drive them out of the city, arguing that city leaders have ignored what he described as a more concrete and damaging population loss. When I speak about how the wealthiest in this city should pay a little bit more in taxes, I am often told about a potential exodus, Mamdani said.
King's intuition was that white people with lower incomes would support this type of policy because they could also benefit from it. In 1967, King argued, "It seems to me that the Civil Rights Movement must now begin to organize for the guaranteed annual income . . . which I believe will go a long, long way toward dealing with the Negro's economic problem and the economic problem with many other poor people confronting our nation."
Truth to Power is a regular series of conversations with writers about the promises and pitfalls of movements for social justice. From the roots of racial capitalism to the psychic toll of poverty, from resource wars to popular uprisings, the interviews in this column focus on how to write about the myriad causes of oppression and the organized desire for a better world.
The state's biggest players—Registered Organizations (ROs), often multi-state operators (MSOs)—are flexing financial muscle and regulatory privilege to seize control of the entire industry.
Tiffany Crutcher, a board member of Justice for Greenwood, emphasized that Mayor Monroe Nichols' "road to repair" plan for 1921 massacre descendants is a significant step in acknowledging historical injustices.
In far too many places, the struggles for racial and economic justice have become disconnected. The decline of unions has contributed to stagnant wage gaps.