Democratic New York City Mayor Eric Adams, in an apparent attempt to show his empathy for the suffering of the Haitian people, claimed that New Yorkers call their city the “Port-au-Prince of America.”
We call New York City the Port-Au-Prince of America. We feel the pain our Haitian neighbors feel as the situation grows dire.
To the people of Haiti and our own Haitian community here in New York City, know that we stand with you today and always.
— Mayor Eric Adams (@NYCMayor) March 13, 2024
Common nicknames for New York include: The Big Apple, The Capital of the World, The Center of the Universe, The City That Never Sleeps, The Empire City, The Five Boroughs, and Metropolis (the latter coined from the Superman comic books.)
Adams’ claim elicited guffaws on social media and a Community Note that stated simply, “No one calls New York City the Port-au-Prince of America.”
Sample responses from social media included, “’I’ve lived here my entire life and I’ve never heard anyone say that,” “Who the f*** has ever said that?”, “Two minutes ago you were crying about the strain all the illegal immigrants were putting on your city and blaming Texas,” “Oh yes, can’t go a day without hearing NYC is Port Au Prince of America or that Cincinnati is the Istanbul of the Midwest,” “No one has ever called NYC that until you did just now. Literally no one. Like, ever. Never has anyone ever called it that until this tweet. You, sir, are a terrible and blatant liar,” and “Is it because both are s*** holes? Because then, yes.”
But Adams may have a point with his comparison.
“165,000 Haitians have fled their homes, driven out by gang violence, with nowhere else to go in Port-au-Prince,” a report stated in June 2023. In November 2023, 92,879 homeless people slept each night in New York City’s main municipal shelter system, the Coalition for the Homeless reported.
“Haiti’s crime rate has more than doubled since last year, as the Caribbean island nation faces widespread insecurity and gang violence, new data has revealed,” CNN reported in April 2023. “More than 1,600 incidents including homicide, rape, kidnapping, and lynchings were reported in the first quarter of 2023.”
New York City had 386 homicides and 974 shootings in 2023, according to the New York Police Department. And then there’s the perennial garbage in the city. As The New York Times reported earlier this month: “Consider the ubiquitous New York trash bag. It tears. It leaks. It smells. It multiplies on the sidewalk, attracting carryout clamshells and still-full coffee cups tossed on top until it all melds into a sticky mess. That mess feeds rats, blocks sidewalks and spills into the street.”
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In Port-au-Prince, “Waste is piling up because of the capital city’s underfunded waste management services and a lack of landfills that are close enough to where people live and the waste is generated. The entire country has only one landfill to serve more than 11.3 million Haitians, located North of Port-Au-Prince,” Caroline Attaway. a Development Officer for University Advancement at Georgia College & State University, noted in 2023.