NYC Mayor Adams urges student protesters to do more; gets honorary degree
About 10 protesters confronted Mayor Adams during a graduation ceremony at Pace University on Monday — three weeks after students began circulating a petition to have his appearance at the event nixed.
The protesters turned their backs on the mayor during a commencement address he delivered to about 15,000 people at Arthur Ashe Stadium in Flushing, Queens.
During his remarks, Adams, who received an honorary doctorate during the ceremony, pushed back on their beefs with him.
“I know protests,” he said, rattling off a list of causes he’s demonstrated for in the past. “But I’m not getting a degree today because I know how to protest. Let me tell you why I’m getting a degree: because after protests, you must do something to protect. You cannot simply protest. You have to protect.”
Adams appeared to be responding to an online petition, which, as of Monday afternoon, was signed by more than 1,400 people.
The petition demanded Adams not appear at the graduation and included a list of policies the signers felt disqualified him. Among them were Adams’ controversial push to remove homeless encampments from city streets, cuts to the education budget that he outlined in February and an uptick in crime.
“Eric Adams does not represent the current pace student body’s ideals and values,” wrote Sophie Krupanszky on the change.org petition. “It is disgusting that pace considered him in the first place.”
“Mayor Adams is a cruel, heartless man who would rather militarize the police than invest in communities,” Sanaya Deas wrote three weeks ago. “The Pace community does not want him!”
That wasn’t exactly the case on Monday, though.
Pace University President Marvin Krislov feted Hizzoner with a Doctor of Human Letters and praised him for his “tireless commitment” to the city.
After Krislov’s introduction, Adams, a former NYPD captain, praised the protestors, and described how he himself had protested against police brutality in the past, but he then suggested that those who turned their backs on him do more than protest.
“What does that mean?” he said. “That means that you stand up to the overproliferation of guns in our country when you see 10 innocent people shot in Buffalo merely because of their ethnicity. “It means you stop allowing guns to cause highways of death to our community, where innocent black and brown children are losing their lives.”
Adams also addressed the issue of homeless street encampments with a common refrain of his, saying there is “nothing dignified” about people living in the street.
He concluded with a tone both defiant of the protestors and encouraging.
“As long as you dream, as long as you fight for what you think is right, this country will become the country we want it to be,” he said. “And in the process, there’s going to be a lot of people who will hate you. All I can say: have your haters become your waiters when you sit down at the table of success.”
