Vice President Kamala Harris didn’t attend Monday’s West Indian Day Parade in Brooklyn. But the Democratic presidential candidate, who’s of West Indian descent, was on the minds of many local elected officials as they gathered for the annual Caribbean culture celebration along Brooklyn’s Eastern Parkway.
“Walk down Eastern Parkway … in honor of the next president of these United States: Kamala Harris,” New York Attorney General Letitia James told revelers at a pre-parade breakfast where a long list of local elected Dems delivered what effectively amounted to pro-Harris stump speeches.
Harris, whose father was born in Jamaica, is expected to easily win deep-blue New York in her general election battle against former President Donald Trump this November.
Still, Empire State Democratic leaders are seen as valuable Harris surrogates ahead of this fall, as evidenced by last month’s Democratic National Convention, where several New York politicians delivered remarks, including Gov. Hochul, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Queens Rep. Grace Meng and Harlem Councilman Yusef Salaam.
Monday’s pre-parade breakfast served as another opportunity for New York Democrats to push their pro-Harris messaging.
“This election, we are telling everyone to vote, and so if you need a little acronym from me: V-O-T-E — victory over the enemy,” Brooklyn Assemblywoman Latrice Walker, whose district includes parts of Monday’s parade route, said to cheers from the breakfast crowd.
City Comptroller Brad Lander, who’s running against Mayor Adams in next year’s Democratic mayoral primary, chimed in, too. “This year, we are all Jamaicans trying to make sure Kamala Harris is the next president of the United States,” he said.
Though he has been publicly supportive of Harris since she became the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, Mayor Adams notably didn’t attend the pre-parade breakfast. He skipped the subsequent parade ribbon-cutting, too, but joined the march later on along with hundreds of New Yorkers donning bright colors and sashaying down the parkway to thumping Caribbean tunes.
Asked along the parade route whether he thought this year’s event was especially important from a political standpoint given the presidential race, Adams told the Daily News: “Every year is important.”
Adams, who angered national Democrats last year by sharply criticizing President Biden over his handling of the migrant crisis, focused instead on touting public safety measures around this year’s parade and the pre-dawn J’Ouvert celebration preceding it.
“We knew we could celebrate and be safe at the same time,” said Adams, who marched with staffers from his office, police officials and Queens Assemblywoman Jenifer Rajkumar.
But just a few hours later, at least five people were shot along the parade route on the corner of Franklin Ave. and Eastern Parkway, police said. Their conditions weren’t immediately known.
Earlier, a Daily News reporter observed a man get tackled to the ground on an Eastern Parkway sidewalk by a group of officers, one of whom pulled out a baton and struck him, just as the mayor and his entourage passed by while marching in the parade. The man was then led away in handcuffs into an NYPD vehicle.
It’s unclear what set off the commotion. NYPD Deputy Commissioner for Operations Kaz Daughtry, who marched with the mayor and walked over as the arrest took place, told The News that the man taken into custody was involved in a “beating” and that cops were “investigating.”
The West Indian Day Parade and celebrations connected to it have for years been marred by violence, perhaps most infamously in 2015, when Carey Gabay, an aide to then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, was killed by a stray bullet fired during a gang shootout in Crown Heights after a J’Ouvert celebration.
Last week, NYPD officials said the department was planning to deploy a heavy police presence along the parade route, including drones hovering above it. Officers were also expected to perform spot checks of parade-goers using handheld metal detectors, according to police officials.
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