The Washington Post reported on Thursday that a group of billionaires and business titans privately pressured New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) to send police to disperse pro-Palestinian protestors at Columbia University. The elite group held a Zoom video call on April 6 with Adams, about a week after the mayor sent New York police to the campus, the newspaper reported.
Jon Jeter, an author and journalist, sat down with Sputnik’s The Critical Hour on Friday. Jeter told the show’s hosts that he finds it “ironic” the US has “Black mayors in the biggest cities in the country”, and yet their approval ratings are “in the toilet”.
According to a recent poll, only 16% of likely voters in NYC would vote for Adams in the next election, and two-thirds say they would vote for someone else.
“Why? Because they're taking their cues from the business class, the corporate class. We know this explicitly with Eric Adams. We can assume that's the case with [Chicago Mayor] Brandon Johnson as well, and the people are rejecting it out there,” said Jeter.
Following his first year in office, Johnson has slammed into a net approval rating of -29% with only 28% of likely voters saying they approve of his performance in office, and a majority (57%) saying they disapprove and 41% strongly disapprove.
“All of these Black mayors, they are first and foremost employees of the corporate class, the CEO class in the cities where they function. None more so than Eric Adams, who I think we can do a whole show on how Eric Adams carries water with this neoliberal elite,” he added.
“And, by the way, his policies are neoliberal to the core and they are prescriptions which are only digging a deeper hole for his city,” said Jeter. “And so, they've always taken their orders from this corporate elite. This is business as usual. I'm sure this is not their first time calling Mayor Adams and telling him what to do.”
The report suggests the chat group - titled “Israel Current Events” - which was formed after the October 7th attack, has influenced the highest levels of the Israeli government, the US business world and other elite universities. The report also found that more than a dozen of the roughly 100 members of the group appear on Forbes’s annual list of billionaires.
Prominent figures who appeared in the chat include: “former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, Dell founder and CEO Michael Dell, hedge fund manager Bill Ackman and Joshua Kushner, founder of Thrive Capital and brother of Jared Kushner, former president Donald Trump’s son-in-law.” The newspaper adds that the chat was initiated by a staffer for Barry Sternlicht, who never joined the group directly.
“These people who govern us, the ruling class, their misrule is characterized by a lack of new ideas. They don't have any counter arguments anymore. All they know is power. And so all they know is that they elect. They got this man elected,” he added.
“He's not intellectual. He does exactly what they say. They put ideas in his head because he has none of his own, right. And so this is clearly starting to become problematic, right. Because people are no longer responding, but they don't know what else to do.”
“That's such a big part of this class war ... where race is used to divide the working class,” said Jeter. “Trying to peel off layers of the working class and turn them against each other.”
Just four days after the group chat members held a video call with the NYC mayor, student protestors occupied Hamilton Hall, a campus building, when the school’s president invited police back to clear it. At least 112 were arrested in the process, and police claim that 32 were not affiliated with the school.
More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israel-Hamas war, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health. Israel has lost about 1,200 Israelis who were killed by Hamas in the assault in October.