Albany, NY: Anti-Stop and Frisk Posters Pasted at Bloomberg Campaign Office

The following action report was anonymously submitted to It’s Going Down which we reprint below.

It reads:

The campaign headquarters of Michael Bloomberg were decorated with wheat paste posters early Monday March 2, reading, “Bloomberg plus Sheehan equals Stop and Frisk for Albany.” This action highlights the city’s anger over Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan’s endorsement of a Republican oligarch for president. The Bloomberg campaign rented a large office in downtown Albany, beginning in mid-February, which has since sat visibly empty across the street from the New York State Capitol and Albany’s City Hall.

Sheehan endorsed Bloomberg for president in early February, prompting criticism from many city residents and local organizers who say her choice clinches her support of the ruling class over Albany’s communities. Sheehan first ran for mayor seven years ago as a “modern progressive” despite her past work at one of New York’s most notorious anti-union and anti-worker law firms Bond Schoeneck & King. In her tenure as mayor her true colors have shown as she has abandoned her progressive campaign to serve the narrow interests of Albany’s ruling class.

Throughout Sheehan’s tenure as mayor she has frequently defended the violent actions of Albany City Police and their practice of racial profiling and Stop and Frisk style policing. Sheehan’s acceptance of Stop and Frisk policing came to light during the full year of protest that followed the police shooting that killed Dontay Ivy, an unarmed Black man who was walking home in his own neighborhood. Sheehan repeatedly defended the police who murdered Ivy, saying they were justified in searching him even though they had no suspicion of a crime.

Sheehan’s endorsement of Bloomberg also comes in the wake of the retirement of Detective James Olsen, the Albany City cop who shot, Ellazar Williams, an unarmed teenager in the back, paralyzing him for life in 2018. Sheehan and the “progressive” DA David Soares quickly declined to investigate or indict Olsen — allowing him to retire at full pension as one of the highest paid city employees (he made more money than the mayor during his last few years on the occupying police force).

Individuals involved in this action released a communique stating, in part: “From Albany to New York City we know the kind of ‘law and order’ Bloomberg and Sheehan encourage with their police departments. It doesn’t have a place in Albany, it doesn’t have a place in NYC, it doesn’t have a place in Washington DC, and it doesn’t have a place anywhere else. Sheehan may have endorsed Bloomberg after his ‘philanthropic’ payoffs, but Albany doesn’t endorse Bloomberg or any other Oligarch.”

The people of Albany should remember — Never Bloomberg and No More Sheehan. Let this serve as a lesson that “progressive” Democrats are not to be trusted as long as capitalism and the police state are in charge, no matter what they promise on the campaign trail.

Building community power is the only way to protect each other.