New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said Thursday he "obviously" disagrees with the ideas espoused by his controversial housing official who linked landlords to White supremacy.
Mamdani was asked by PIX11's Henry Rosoff about his choice to appoint activist and Democratic Socialists of America member Cea Weaver to head the Mayor's Office to Protect Tenants after old social media posts from her now-deleted X account resurfaced.
Among her comments was a 2019 post on then-Twitter where she wrote that "private property including and kind of ESPECIALLY homeownership is a weapon of white supremacy masquerading as 'wealth building' public policy."
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"She compared homeownership as a tool of White supremacy," Rosoff told Mamdani. "You said you would keep her on because of the good work that you feel that she is doing, but what do you think of the comment itself drawing a line between landlords and White supremacists?"
"Obviously, that's not an opinion that I share," Mamdani said. "And I made the decision to have her as our executive director of the mayor's office to protect tenants, not because of her comments, but because of her work."
He added, "She is someone who has won significant victories for tenants not just in New York City but across the entirety of the state, [a] formative part of what was an upstate-downstate coalition, and we've seen her already hard at work in this past week."
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During an interview with Spectrum News NY1, Weaver addressed the backlash over her comments, saying she regretted "some" of them.
"I don't think I'm out of my mind," Weaver replied. "Some of those things are certainly not how I would say things today, and are regretful."
While she did not specify which statements she regrets, Weaver said she aims to tackle "racial inequalities" while serving New Yorkers.
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"But, you know, I do think my decades of experience fighting for more affordable housing sort of stands on its own," she said. "I'm proud to be in this role fighting for stronger tenants' rights. And I think that for many years, people have been locked out of the property market, that has produced systemic and racial inequalities in our system."
