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By Giulia Carbonaro
Senior Reporter
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Resurfaced tweets from Cea Weaver, who was appointed by Zohran Mamdani as director for the newly revitalized Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants, shows the tenant organizer and housing advocate comparing homeownership to "a weapon of white supremacy."
In a post published in August 2019 on the social media platform then known as Twitter, Weaver wrote: "Private property including and kind of ESPECIALLY homeownership is a weapon of white supremacy masquerading as ‘wealth building’ public policy."
The post was shared by the MAGA X account "Libs of TikTok," known for its scalding commentary on left-wing politicians and liberal users on the platform. "Mamdani’s newly appointed tenant advocate director thinks home ownership and private property is white supremacy," the account wrote.
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Weaver’s X profile is currently deactivated. Newsweek contacted Mamdani’s press office for comment by email on Monday morning.
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Why It Matters
Weaver’s socialist politics likely align with that of freshly minted mayor Mamdani, who declared in his inauguration speech on January 1 that he will govern New York City as a democratic socialist.
In the lead-up to the mayoral election, Republicans had been portraying Mamdani as a communist, resurfacing old comments he had made about "seizing the means of production" to denounce him as a threat to New York. Mamdani’s team, however, responded that there was no mention of a similar policy in his campaign.
The new mayor has also distanced himself from typically democratic socialist proposals such as closing all prisons and defunding the police, saying instead that the kind of socialism he champions focuses on a more equal distribution of wealth—which would eventually lower costs for working class families in the city.
What To Know
Weaver, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, has long been a prominent figure in New York City’s tenant advocacy scene.
She has led Housing Justice for All, a statewide movement for tenants and homeless New Yorkers, and the New York State Tenant Bloc, an organization working to support pro-tenant policies. Here, Mamdani said, "she helped pass the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019, landmark legislation that closed loopholes landlords used to raise rents and push apartments out of stabilization."
As part of the mayor’s team, she will "work with us to hold landlords accountable and ensure New York City tenants are living in safe, clean homes," Mamdani said on January 2.
In another clip resurfaced by the conservative X account "PNW Conservative," Weaver talked about the fact that "for centuries, we’ve really treated property as an individualized good and not a collective good" and that in the future we will transition to treating it as a collective good under a model of "shared equity."
In the resurfaced clip, which is undated, she said: "It will mean that families, especially white families, are going to have a different relationship to property than the one we currently have."
In another post resurfaced on X, Weaver said on June 13, 2018: "Seize private property!"
The type of backlash that these resurfaced posts are getting from conservative users on social media has pursued Mamdani since his stunning victory at the Democratic mayoral primary last year.
But so far, neither Weaver nor Mamdani have suggested anything remotely as extreme as part of their housing policies for New York City.
In their first day in office, the two announced an intervention in the bankruptcy proceedings of Pinnacle Realty, a landlord responsible for more than 5,000 housing violations, 14,000 complaints across 83 buildings, and money owed to the City of New York.
"New York City will take action to seek immediate relief and improve living conditions for Pinnacle tenants, an unprecedented step on behalf of renters living in some of the city’s most neglected buildings," Mamdani’s office said.
What People Are Saying
Mamdani said in his inauguration speech on January 1: "We will answer to all New Yorkers, not to any billionaire or oligarch who thinks they can buy our democracy.
"We will govern without shame and insecurity, making no apology for what we believe. I was elected as a democratic socialist, and I will govern as a democratic socialist. I will not abandon my principles for fear of being deemed radical.
"We will strive each day to ensure that no New Yorker is priced out of any one of those basic necessities."
Weaver wrote on Bluesky last year: "There are lots of things the mayor CANT do on housing, but freezing the rent is one of the only things they can unilaterally do for 2.4 million New York renters. Policy plans are great, so is a rent freeze."
What Happens Next
Mamdani has promised to deliver policies that will make the cost of housing for New York tenants more affordable, including freezing the rent for 1 million rent-regulated apartments—though experts say he might not have the authority to do so on his own.
Both Mamdani and Weaver are likely to continue facing heightened scrutiny over their socialist stances.
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