'Go back to Iowa': Brooklyn leader's anti-gentrification speech raises hackles
Eric Adams, considered a mayoral contender, says ‘New York belongs to the people that were here and made it what it is’



Brooklyn’s borough president has been criticized after telling people to “go back to Iowa” in a speech on gentrification in New York City, in which he said black and brown people were being pushed out.
Eric Adams, who has said he is “pursuing” a run for mayor in 2021 but has not formally declared, made the comments at a Martin Luther King Jr Day event on Monday.
Lamenting racial inequality in Brooklyn and the city as a whole, Adams reportedly said: “Black and brown people are being pushed out of the borough they made possible.”
Adams told the crowd at an event hosted by civil rights organisation the National Action Network: “You were waking up to gunshots and not alarm clocks, and you stayed.“You were here before Starbucks. You were here before others came and decided they wanted to be part of this city. Folks are not only hijacking your apartments and displacing your living arrangements, they displace your conversations and say the things that are important to you are no longer important, and they decide what’s important and what’s not important.

“Go back to Iowa. You go back to Ohio. New York City belongs to the people that [were] here and made New York City what it is.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...ric-adams-iowa