Mayor Zohran Mamdani stands by tenant advocate Cea Weaver amid controversy over social media posts
Cea Weaver speaks during a news conference at a Brooklyn apartment building on Mayor Zohran Mamdani's first day in office on Jan. 1. Credit: Jeff Bachner
One of Cea Weaver's since-deleted social media posts said, "Private property is a weapon of white supremacy." Homeownership, she wrote, is, too. In other posts, she sought to "endorse a no more white men in office platform," to "Impoverish the *white* middle class," and more.
Weaver, 37, is a tenant activist who now directs Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s Office to Protect Tenants, which is tasked with defending renters' rights, standing up to landlords and making sure the city helps renters dealing with unsafe or illegal living conditions. Her online comments resurfaced this week, catalyzing calls for her ouster, warnings from President Donald Trump’s administration and a proposed state constitutional amendment to protect private property.
Mamdani has stood by Weaver, his longtime friend who served as the executive director of Housing Justice for All and its sister nonprofit, the New York State Tenant Bloc. Mamdani said she has educated him about housing issues.
"Cea Weaver is someone that we hired to stand up for tenants across the city based on the track record that she had of standing up for tenants across the city and the state," Mamdani said Wednesday at an unrelated news conference appointing the head of the city human rights commission.
Outrage over Weaver's posts helped end her nomination to the City Planning Commission in 2021.
Mamdani has refused to address Weaver's online posts. His response is different from how he reacted last month during the one-day tenure of his appointments chief, Cat Almonte Da Costa, over resurfaced antisemitic tweets from about 15 years ago, some from when she was a teenager. Da Costa said she was remorseful, particularly now as the mother of Jewish children, and offered her resignation, which Mamdani accepted.
Weaver's recently resurfaced tweets also included digs at white people on planes, white children and white people reproducing.
For her part, she said she would have phrased her remarks differently. They were made from around 2016 through 2021.
"I think that some of those things are certainly not how I would say things today — and are regretful," Weaver told NY1 Tuesday.
New York City Council Minority Leader David Carr said on X that Weaver "shouldn't be serving in government." City Councilwoman Joann Ariola (R-Queens) accused the mayor's team of misusing claims of white supremacy "as their Trojan horse to force their plans through."
Harmeet Dhillon, the Trump Justice Department's assistant attorney general for civil rights, responding to the Weaver criticism, said the administration would "protect all legal residents of NYC from illegal overreach!"
"NYC denizens: @CivilRights has your back! We are watching closely!" she posted on X.
Weaver’s posts echoed a school of thought that America's legacy of racist laws, slavery, segregation and housing discrimination have perpetuated and institutionalized an advantage for whites.
When homes are assets, the argument goes, rents rise for those who aren't homeowners and wealth accumulates for those who are, exacerbating inequality.
A 2019 undercover investigation by Newsday found extensive evidence on Long Island, one of the country's most segregated suburbs, of separate and unequal treatment of minority would-be homebuyers.
Weaver’s posts criticize gentrification and advocate for electing Communists, shrinking the value of real estate, taxing the rich, ending all evictions, enacting universal rent control and funding "public housing for everyone."
Weaver was crucial in helping to shape a 2019 overhaul of state housing laws, leading to restrictions on rent hikes and curbing a process that over a quarter century allowed 300,000 units or more to be removed from rent regulation and put on the open market.
Two years later, she advocated shifting property away from "a collective good and towards a model of shared equity."
Doing so, she said, "will mean that families — especially white families, but some POC families who are homeowners as well — are gonna have a different relationship to property than the one that we currently have."
Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, a Republican who's running for governor, has proposed a constitutional amendment to codify private property ownership rights. New York State's constitution can be amended through either a convention where the proposal is approved, or through the majority approval of an amendment in two consecutive legislative sessions in both the Assembly and the State Senate. Voters must also ultimately approve.
Matthew Chayes, a Newsday reporter since 2007, covers New York City.
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