Here’s a bizarre occurrence that no one had on their bingo card in 2024: Rev. Al Sharpton baptized New York City Mayor Eric Adams on Good Friday (March 29). What’s even weirder is that it occurred alongside a group of eleven male inmates at Rikers Island.
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The jail complex is notorious for its putrid conditions and prisoner deaths, yet the highly scrutinized politician looked at it as an opportunity to change its narrative as well as his own.
“I recommitted myself to my faith, to our city, and to our shared efforts to give all New Yorkers a chance to succeed. You know my journey. I went from being arrested to being elected mayor,” Adams wrote on X/Twitter. “I used that story to remind these young men that where they are is not who they are.”
He continued: “And that for the first time in their lives, they had a mayor who does not look down on them but rather sat side-by-side with them as we recommit ourselves to the right path.”
Top to it off, the mayor’s offices provided photos from the baptism which seemingly show Adams holding hands with Sharpton, the reverend washing Adams’ feet and Adams being baptized.
Adams is infamously pro-law enforcement, was the center of a donor scandal (which led to the FBI seizing his phones) and has come under fire for his leadership. Just last week, criminal lawyer and activist Olayemi Olurin called out the mayor on “The Breakfast Club” for sensationalizing crime in New York City while stating it’s one of the safest places in the country.
In response to critiques of placing an extra 2,000 cops in the city’s subway system, Adams offered a glib response. “Now you may say, ‘Eric, I don’t want to see a visible presence of uniformed officers.’ And that’s cool. That’s not what the overwhelming number of New Yorkers are saying,” he said during the interview. His latest stunt is definitely garnering attention—but maybe for all the wrong reasons.
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