For the past several weeks the researchers, writers and editors on the YSDA’s Q&Q Desk have been frustrated by the lack of material generated by news makers that meets our high standards. So, we’ve gone silent.
And wouldn’t you know it. The last couple of weeks we’ve been flooded by candidates for the highly prized Quote of the Week.
There’s Donald Trump’s assertion that he’s above the law. What can restrain him if not international law? “My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.” Well, okay then. We’re screwed. The only thing that can stop Trump from doing whatever he wants (invading countries, blowing up boats, seizing Greenland) is his morality and his brilliant mind. Let’s just say that would have been a rich vein to explore here in the Q&Q.
Then there was our friend Stephen Miller who said, “We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.” Why do I think that would sound even better in German? With exclamation points? And delivered in a big stadium? With lots of flags and everybody in sharp uniforms?
But despite all that competition, it’s new New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s choice to lead the Mayor’s Office on Tenant Protection that wins this week’s honor. We’ve already explored, in a more serious post, Mamdani’s classic quote from his inaugural address about the “frigidity of rugged individualism” being replaced by the “warmth of collectivism.”
But Cea Weaver has so many great quotes that she makes it hard to choose. Let’s go with this one:
“Private property including and kind of ESPECIALLY homeownership is a weapon of white supremacy masquerading as ‘wealth building’ public policy.”
- PBS sought to minimize the fallout by reporting this as “a years old Tweet”. She tweeted it in 2017. But less than five years ago, in a podcast, she said what?
A) “Ya know, I was wrong about that. Homeownership actually builds the middle class.”
B) “I’m growing and learning and my views are evolving and I’m not sure I’d say that today.”
C) “Now that I’ve settled into my cute little cape cod on Long Island, I see things differently.”
D) “White, middle-class homeowners are a huge problem for a renter justice movement… We must undermine the institution of homeownership.”
2. In contrast to Weaver’s comments, which were made “years ago” and “some of which” she now disavows, Mamdani quickly accepted the resignation of his appointments secretary, Catherine Almonte De Costa. De Costa had posted anti-semitic comments, but has since apologized for them and, in fact, is now married to a Jewish man and is raising their children in the Jewish faith. When did she post those anti-semitic comments?
A) 2017.
B) 2021.
C) 2024.
D) 2011.
3. When it was discovered that the accomplished actor Frederic March, at age 18, had once briefly been a member of a UW campus group calling itself the Ku Klux Klan, despite the fact that the organization never espoused racist ideas nor did March and that, in fact, March went on to be a courageous advocate for civil rights long before it was popular in Hollywood, the UW:
A) Said it would let it go as this was “a years old incident.”
B) Said it was regrettable that an organization with that name ever existed on campus and it was mystery why March would have joined it, however briefly, but that his lifelong commitment to civil rights far overshadowed that.
C) Said nobody should be held accountable for everything they’d said or done as a college student.
D) Unceremoniously ripped March’s name from a theatre on campus and refused to reinstate it even after receiving a letter asking them to do so signed by dozens of prominent civil rights activists and an oped criticizing March’s erasure in the New York Times.
4. How have Black homeowners in New York reacted to Weaver’s comments? Which of these things did they NOT say?
A) “Homeownership is an essential element of black wealth. It’s repugnant to attach yourself to policies that would look to devalue homeownership,” said Marlon Rice, who is running in the Democratic primary for the 25th state Senate District in Brooklyn.
B) “White supremacy? I’m not white,” said Renee Gregory, president of Brownstoners of Bedford-Stuyvesant Inc., which was founded in 1978 to help keep Black homeowners in the historically Black neighborhood.
C) “I read Weaver’s comments. I don’t know where they come from,” a perplexed Gregory added, explaining that the 37-year-old’s past comments have become the talk of Black “brownstoners” in the neighborhood.
D) “We must smash the white patriarchy and force all of them to live on collective farms while repurposing their bourgeois mansions for the proletariat,” said Jackson Lee of the social justice group Everybody Poor Now!
5. Weaver knows about white supremacy because:
A) She was raised by a single Black mother in one of New York’s worst housing projects.
B) She’s spent time meeting with Black middle class homeowners who, surprisingly, share these views.
C) She knows that wealth-building isn’t done through home ownership but rather playing the lottery and, perhaps, sports betting. Also, crypto’s a good idea.
D) She grew up in Rochester and learned about all this at Bryn Mawr.
Answers
Oh, they’re all D, but you knew that, didn’t you?
Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos 