“…No one should have to go without a meal in this city.” On March 24, 2025, former NYPD officer and soon-to-be former NYC Mayor, Eric Adams made the previous statement on News 12 The Bronx just before the interviewer cut to a commercial break. Eric said this in response to a now-viral video that emerged last month, of a man eating a raw NYC rat. The video has sparked a conversation about mental illness and the role elected officials need to play in providing support for these members of our community. Eric made this statement as a response to the interviewer who asked the soon-to-be former Mayor, “Do you know if this man has been connected to help as of yet?”
Eric’s full response: “No I don’t and ya know, no one should have to go without a meal in this city”
The very next day, On March 25, 2025, local journalist Johandry Jimenez reported via her social media pages @johandry_jimeneznews, that NYPD officers confiscated tables of fresh produce from local vendors and tossed them into the back of sanitation trucks for disposal.
On March 27th, just a few days after Eric had been asked if “this man” was connected with the help he needed, the man named Abbakar Traoe aka the man who ate a rat was arrested for allegedly preventing law enforcement from “doing their jobs”. No other details have been released and we do not know if Mr. Traoe has been connected with the help he needs.
So, what should we expect from our elected officials as tariffs signal an uncertain future for already thousands upon thousands of food-insecure homes? First, we should expect to be ignored. Our struggles will be minimized the same way Eric minimized the struggles Mr. Traoe was experiencing. Mr. Traoe was dealing with some pre-existing conditions but because his hunger drove him to consume vermin we can assume he’s consumed the bacterial pathogens that carry “E. coli, Salmonella, and C. difficile, which causes mild to life-threatening gastroenteritis in people and Seoul hantavirus, which causes Ebola-like hemorrhagic fever and kidney failure in humans.”
Will Mr. Traoe receive the medical help he needs while awaiting trial or will he meet the same fate as that of Soso Ramishvili, Terrence Moore, Deshawn Jenkins, and the 35 other humans who have died in custody since 2022?
We should expect our elected officials to ridicule us. They will blame us for our struggles, talk down to us, and leave us to our own devices until they figure out a way to profit off of our struggle. Then, like they always do, will offer an insult to injury- they will offer shelters and other types of temporary housing but never stable, clean, and truly affordable housing. Names like Acacia…the largest provider of homeless housing in New York’s metropolitan area…” will be spoken about more often on the news, as heroes and saviors of our nation and we will be the scum who have to be taken care of by the state. They will criticize the meals we make, the clothing we wear, the homes and company we keep, and all the while, we struggle to see the sunlight of another day. They will tear down every inch of our beings as we collectively fight for our lives until they decide to attack us physically.
In the News 12 interview mentioned above, Eric boasts “I’m on the subway system, I engage with people who are dealing with severe mental illness. I know what it’s like… I said I was going to… not allow people to live in our subway systems, 8,000 people we moved off”
8,000 unhoused humans who may have been and may still be struggling with mental illness were criminalized overnight and made to disappear without a trace.
So again, we ask; what do we expect? What do we expect when the local city government is disappearing unhoused, poor people and the feds are disappearing anyone who looks like they may be foreign-born? What do we expect after they neglect our needs to the point that we are forced to take matters into our own hands? What do we expect after they ridicule our every effort to cling to society? What do we expect after they nearly annihilate us, disconnect us from society and ultimately our humanity?
We should expect monuments, signs, and statues saying “Never Again will Someone have to go without a meal in this city.”
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