Africa-Press – Ghana. He met with foreign dignitaries and participated in a spiritual cleansing ceremony. He visited infamous sites of the slave trade and toured thriving local businesses. And he celebrated Hanukkah with a fellow Brooklynite, about 5,000 miles from home.
As New York City grappled with a spate of urgent challenges over the past week that will have lasting implications for the incoming mayoral administration, the mayor-elect, Eric Adams, was in Ghana, searching, he has said, for his roots on a “spiritual journey.”
For many Black Americans, a visit to Ghana — a country through whose ports millions of Africans passed on the brutal journey to plantations — is a wrenching and moving experience. And Mr. Adams, slated to be New York City’s second Black mayor, has cast his recent trip there as proof of resilience and progress.
“My ancestors left Africa with slavery,” Mr. Adams declared at one recent event. “I’m coming home with the mayoralty. And if I do that only for my aspiration, then I failed those ancestors.”But after more than a week away, Mr. Adams has returned to a city that is confronting serious problems of public health and public safety, and a new, sweeping vaccine mandate that he must navigate.
He must also jump-start a transition process that has, so far, lagged the pace set by his predecessor.
Mr. Adams left town having made no appointments to his future administration — in contrast to Mayor Bill de Blasio, who had announced roles including police commissioner, first deputy mayor and director of intergovernmental affairs by the end of the first week of December 2013.
On Thursday, Mr. Adams officially announced his new choice for schools chancellor, David Banks, a sign his transition is accelerating. He opened the event with a direct rebuke of anyone who would question his trip abroad, including, he said, the “tabloids.”“People who criticize this, they just didn’t get it,” Mr. Adams said. “They just didn’t get what my campaign represented to so many people in this city and in this country.”His team insists that he remained heavily engaged in transition work from Ghana. He also kept tabs on New York City politics as his top lieutenants waded into the City Council speaker’s race, a contest that has significant implications for Mr. Adams’s agenda and has become increasingly contentious.
“The mayor-elect worked continually throughout his trip, regularly talking with key advisers about the Omicron threat and other pressing issues, while preparing his new administration and planning for a number of major announcements on his return,” said Evan Thies, his spokesman.
Few would begrudge Mr. Adams a postelection vacation or question the meaning of his trip to Ghana. But his visit came less than a month before he is to be sworn in to one of the most consequential jobs in the country, and some questioned the timing.
“It is very unusual,” said Maya Wiley, a former counsel to Mr. de Blasio and a civil rights lawyer, who ran against Mr. Adams in the June mayoral primary. “What I could say is that it surprises me that this was a trip that could not be taken after the primary, and that it is a very intense time for most new administrations coming into office.”
The trip was largely closed to the press, which Mr. Thies defended by emphasizing the private nature of the journey — but it was hardly a quiet resort retreat. Mr. Adams met with politically and civically prominent people, including a former president of Ghana and the mayor of Accra, the capital city, and delivered speeches of his own.
Interviews with leaders in Ghana and a review of social media postings show that he spent significant time with the Heritage and Cultural Society of Africa Foundation, or HACSA, an organization that is focused on issues including promoting African heritage and building connections with the diaspora.
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