Hours before his indictment, Eric Adams celebrated at the meeting with war criminals

On September 25, just hours before Eric Adams was federally indicted on corruption charges, he did something very typical of a member of the ruling class: He hung out at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met) with war criminals like Joe Biden and Anthony Blinken.

The occasion was a special meeting of the recently ended General Assembly of the United Nations (UNGA). The Met also hosted this event in 2023. The museum management called it an “honor” to host Biden and the United Nations General Assembly and was happy to suspend all regular operations for this reason.

On the face of it, it is ironic that the mayor of New York City could go from clashing with world leaders at a prestigious arts institution to being criminally charged by the federal government, all before the police barricades were cleared from 5th Avenue. But behind the fanfare of the Met’s high-profile events, the UNGA and the indictment of the mayor, lies the fact that Eric Adams is still not all that different from his ruling-class colleagues. He was by no means the only criminal in the Met that night.

Adams was charged with illegal campaign contributions and accepting bribes from the Turkish government in return for favors. He is even said to have pushed through the New York Fire Department’s approval of the Turkish consulate building upon its completion in 2021, even though the fire department had deemed it unsafe.

Adams’ corruption is certainly despicable. But it’s not much different from the obviously unfair and manipulated procedures that politicians use all the time. For example, New York Governor Kathy Hochul scrapped Manhattan’s congestion pricing, which would have reduced traffic and pollution in the city while allocating $1 billion to the subway system, after being backed by a lobbying group The automotive industry, which would have received tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions, loudly opposed the bill. The Real Estate Board of New York, a coalition of real estate companies that thrive on desperation and wealth inequality in New York City, has sued to stop a pandemic-era bill that would require brokerage fees to be paid by the party who hired the agent, not the tenant (representatives of these companies regularly attend banquets and galas at the Met). Much like Eric Adams’ corrupt dealings with the Turkish government, these maneuvers are designed to enrich those in power while the majority of New Yorkers carry the city on their backs – they are simply completely legal.

In fact, the entire question of legality under capitalism and its racist, repressive court systems is unclear and corrupt. We are often taught to place great emphasis on what is considered legal (and therefore morally good) and illegal (bad!). In reality, the laws we live under have nothing to do with morality and everything to do with stabilizing the dominance of the ruling class over the rest of us. To this end, the U.S. legal system has enabled our government to commit or sanction violent crimes against Black, Indigenous, and poor communities for centuries.

Meanwhile, senior politicians also have the ability to ignore laws that do not serve their interests. For example, U.S. law prohibits the government from sending military aid to a country that prevents U.S. humanitarian assistance from reaching those in need. Recent document leaks show that Antony Blinken dismissed and lied about reports that Israel had blocked U.S. aid to Gaza, arguing that reality would have actually required the U.S. to cut off weapons and aid packages to Israel.

So while Eric Adams suffered the embarrassment of federal indictment after his appearance at the UNGA party, Antony Blinken and Joe Biden were the honored guests guilty of financing genocide. Blinken did everything he could to ensure that US law did not jeopardize US military support for its closest ally in the Middle East. Biden has, of course, occasionally moved toward rhetorical support for a ceasefire, but has not abandoned his lifelong, unconditional support for Israel, continually sending billions of dollars’ worth of weapons that enable the IDF to murder Palestinians and continue its offensive to extend to Lebanon.

Beyond his illegal dealings with the Turkish government, Eric Adams was also in step with Hochul, Biden and the entire bipartisan regime in supporting Israel’s genocidal occupation of Palestine. He has expressed his familiar, never-ending support for Zionism without acknowledging Israel’s campaign of terror and murder against the people of Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Yemen and elsewhere in the Middle East. Its bloated police force has violently suppressed countless protests in solidarity with Palestine. A particularly egregious case was the small army of NYPD officers who surrounded and raided Columbia University and the City College of New York in order to destroy the student camps, including the Columbia Gaza Solidarity Encampment, which was re-igniting the movement around the world ignited. Hochul, for her part, condemned the protesters and praised Biden for providing Israel with the necessary weapons to bomb the Gaza Strip.

Obviously, the current system will never prosecute Eric Adams for his most egregious wrongdoings, because his role within the much larger imperialist project is to maintain the police force and suppress mass movements. The Biden administration would expect nothing less from him. Adams once even called himself the “Biden of Brooklyn,” demonstrating his loyalty to this capitalist party.

With that in mind, the Met’s UNGA party was attended by not one but several criminals, thieves and liars. Accusing any of them of a fraction of their true crimes will not stop the ruling class’s war against the working class and the oppressed people. Luckily, we have the tools to defend ourselves right at our fingertips.

The Met is currently controlled by its CEO and the Board of Trustees, co-chaired by Candace Beinecke and Hamilton “Tony” James. These incredibly rich capitalists will always welcome war criminals into our galleries because they support imperialism. But the Met should not be controlled by billionaire philanthropists when workers – frontline workers, administrators and caregivers, curators and other workers – are the ones who run it. We are the ones who have dedicated our sweat and tears to this museum, its vast collection and its blockbuster exhibitions. We are the ones who know every gallery and every passage as if it were our home. Without us, there is no Met. Our power lies in the fact that we can bring the entire museum to a standstill if we want, and if we take control, we can also run it the way we want.
The day after the UNGA reception, the Met hosted another event with the mayor’s office (the mayor himself was nowhere to be found). The following week, Hochul spent the day at the Met celebrating Hispanic/Latinx Heritage Month, a hypocritical display given her anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies. If workers were the leaders of the Met our parties would look very different to the reception of the UNGA. We wouldn’t have to put up with the revolving door of politicians like Eric Adams and Joe Biden or the real estate and oil moguls who monopolize funding for our museum even though all of their wealth was also created by workers. If we unite and organize and refuse to work together for billionaires and corrupt politicians, we can transform the Met from a cultural bastion of imperialism into a museum for the people.