Politics
NEW: Mamdani’s ‘Tenant Advocate’ Breaks Down In Tears When Confronted About Racist Anti-White Comments
Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s freshly appointed tenant czar, Cea Weaver, broke down in tears Wednesday while ducking reporters’ questions over her past anti-white rhetoric and accusations of gentrification hypocrisy.
Weaver, 37, briefly emerged from her Crown Heights apartment building around 9 a.m., only to retreat inside moments later after being pressed about a $1.6 million Nashville home owned by her mother.
The emotional moment came as scrutiny intensified over Mamdani’s decision to name Weaver director of the city’s Office to Protect Tenants, a post that puts the longtime activist in charge of enforcing tenant protections across New York City.
The backlash erupted after old social media posts resurfaced showing Weaver railing against gentrification and private property, language critics now say, clashes with her own background and family wealth.
“There is no such thing as a ‘good’ gentrifier, only people who are actively working on projects to dismantle white supremacy and capitalism and people who aren’t,” Weaver wrote in a 2018 post.
A year later, she went even further.
“Private property including any kind of ESPECIALLY homeownership is a weapon of white supremacy,” she said in a 2019 post.
Those statements have fueled criticism from housing advocates and political opponents alike, who argue Weaver’s views are out of step with many working-class New Yorkers striving to own homes.
Jon Levine, a reporter for the Washington Free Beacon, posted pictures of Weaver crying on X, with the caption, “Make more Communists cry.”
Weaver has also publicly lamented gentrification in Crown Heights, where she lives, despite being a white, middle-class transplant who attended Bryn Mawr College and later earned a degree from NYU.
“Where I live in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, we saw this cycle where landlords and bankers and policymakers had driven up the value of real estate using speculative financial capital, the housing market crashed, and then the solution to that was just a different private equity firm coming in and owning the buildings,” Weaver told Dissent magazine in an interview spotted by the New York Post.
“This cycle fueled waves of gentrification in Crown Heights.”
Weaver spent five years organizing the Crown Heights Tenant Union from 2010 through 2015, but critics note she has stopped short of addressing how her own presence, and that of similar newcomers, may have played a role in neighborhood changes she condemned.
Adding fuel to the fire are property records showing her mother owns a Nashville house valued at roughly $1.6 million, a detail Weaver declined to address during Wednesday’s brief encounter with reporters.
As pressure mounted, Weaver attempted damage control in a NY1 interview aired Tuesday, defending her career while conceding some remorse over her past language.
“I don’t think I’m out of my mind,” she said.
“You know, I think that some of… some of those things are certainly not how I would, how I would say things today, and are… and are regretful. But, you know, I do think my sort of decades of experience fighting for more affordable housing sort of stands on its own.”
Mamdani’s office has stood by the appointment, but the controversy shows no sign of cooling as critics continue to question whether Weaver’s radical rhetoric, and personal ties to wealth, undermine her credibility as the city’s top tenant advocate.
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