Mayor Eric Adams ready to support naming street in honor of Otto Warmbier

Otto Warmbier would be a New Yorker today.

The 27-year-old would wake up this morning in Manhattan on a quiet Sunday from his Wall Street investment job at famed investment firm Guggenheim Securities, which bought the company, Millstein Investments, which gave an internship to Otto in the summer of 2016. and a job after graduating from the University of Virginia.

MESSAGE FROM NEW YORK CITY TO KIM JONG UN IN HONOR OF OTTO WARMBIER

Otto may be living in the Churchill Apartment building, with other similar young professionals, at Second Avenue and 40th Street, where a friend took a photo of him waiting on the sidewalk of the building during the summer 2015.

But Kim Jong Un’s ruthless regime denied the young American a future when he was falsely arrested, imprisoned for a year and a half and sent home to die with severe brain damage, unable to speak, see or speak. hear, the result of his torture by his North Korean captors. He was taken off life support at a Cincinnati hospital five years ago today.

Otto Warmbier was 22 years old.

In death, Otto became an international symbol of human rights and the struggle for the North Korean people and those elsewhere who seek human dignity and freedom. He was honored at the 2018 State of the Union when his parents, Cindy and Fred, his sister Greta and his brother Austin were given a moving standing ovation by the packed House in honor of his memory. ‘Otto.

The US Senate recently passed a bill named after Otto Warmbier. The bill provides $10 million a year to counter North Korea’s surveillance state and censorship.
(The Warmbier family)

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On Thursday, the US Senate passed the Otto Warmbier North Korea Censorship and Surveillance Act, sponsored by Senators Rob Portman R-Ohio., Sherrod Brown D-Ohio. and Chris Coons D-Del. which “provides $10 million a year for the next five years to counter North Korea’s repressive censorship and surveillance state, while encouraging sanctions against those who enable this repressive information environment within and outside of North Korea”.

“This legislation will help ensure that his memory lives and that the brutal regime responsible for his unjust death is held accountable for this and his myriad other human rights abuses,” Senator Portman said.

“The treatment inflicted on Otto Warmbier by North Korean authorities, which resulted in his death, remains a powerful reminder of the brutality of Kim Jong Un’s regime,” said Senator Brown. “This legislation reaffirms our commitment to address North Korea’s human rights abuses against its own people and others who have been held captive.”

But another honor is in the works, three blocks from where Otto was photographed waiting outside on this hot Manhattan summer day.

“Otto Warmbier Way” is the proposed naming of the street across from the North Korean Mission to the United Nations at Second Avenue and 44th Street, across from 820 Second Avenue, where Kim Jong Un’s diplomats have their offices , just one block from the United Nations. The street’s honorific renaming, seen as a defiant moral message to Kim’s diplomats and a compelling reminder of the regime’s harsh realities to the international community, has impressive bipartisan support, including New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

Mayor Eric Adams is ready to support the street in honor of Otto Warmbier, saying he had “nothing but sympathy for the loss suffered by the Warmbier family when Otto was taken from them”.
(YouTube/New York)

“Mayor Adams unreservedly condemns the human rights abuses committed by North Korea and has nothing but sympathy for the loss suffered by the Warmbier family when Otto was taken from them. If the City Council chooses a street to be renamed in Otto’s name, the mayor would support those efforts,” the mayor’s press secretary, Fabien Levy, told Fox News.

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“Otto Warmbier Way” is also endorsed by: two former US Secretaries of State, Mike Pompeo and John Kerry, Mayor Adams’ predecessor, Bill de Blasio, three former US Ambassadors to the United Nations, including former Governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson, two U.S. Senators on the Human Rights Subcommittee, two Korean U.S. Members of Congress, the current and former Manhattan Borough President, Congresswoman for the District, the New York States Assembly, as well as human rights activists and others. But it has yet to be voted on by the New York City Council, which is responsible for honorary street name changes, although it was first proposed in 2019.

In a tweet Thursday, Otto’s mother, Cindy, blamed the lack of action, despite heavyweight support, on a New York City elected official.

Ms Warmbier tweeted: “There is a member of the New York City Council who has obstructed our efforts to name the street by the North Korean UN Mission Otto Warmbier Way. Who can help us with this?”

Otto Warmbier and his mother Cindy enjoy a family vacation.
(The Warmbier family)

She was responding to the naming of the Washington, D.C. street outside the Saudi Embassy “Jamal Khashoggi Way”, after the Washington Post columnist who was murdered inside the Kingdom’s embassy in Istanbul, allegedly on the orders of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who denied it.

Following the renaming of a Washington DC street in honor of Jamal Khashoggi, Cindy Warmbier tweets in favor of the proposal to rename the street in Manhattan in honor of her son.
(Cindy Warmbier’s Twitter)

In her tweet, Ms Warmbier was referring to New York City Council member Keith Powers, a Democrat from Manhattan, whose district includes the location of North Korea’s UN mission. He is the local official who would be responsible for introducing the street name change bill, in the absence of further action by the city council. Although council member powers expressed support for Otto’s human rights honor when he was first raised three years ago, his office told Fox News in the past that the proposal was in the council’s legal department.

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Street name changes traditionally honor police officers and firefighters who died in the line of duty, as well as military personnel who made the ultimate sacrifice, as well as local community activists and other local notables. But many other names appeared on street signs…some unrelated to the location…and included rock and roll, rap and bee-bop bands, foreign dignitaries, Major League baseball players and beloved restaurant and bar owners, among others.

In 2018, the name of a street in Brooklyn “Boulevard Jean-Jacques Dessalines”, named after the Haitian revolutionary who led his nation to independence against France, sparked controversy. Dessalines is accused of ordering the massacre of up to 10,000 white French residents in 1804.

Cindy and Fred Warmbier, Otto’s parents, became human rights activists on behalf of the North Korean people.
(REUTERS/Lea Millis)

The current set of 79 names that was approved at the June 16 city council meeting includes the Beastie Boys (Beastie Boys Square), R&B vocal group The Force MD’s (The Force MD’s Way), as well as signs honoring local communities such as “Ukrainian Way”, “Little Bangladesh Way” and “Little Thailand Way”.

The official renaming of a street in the Bronx that was approved last December after former Albanian Prime Minister Fan Noli, “Fan Noli Way,” was briefly delayed earlier this year by a change of council member. Noli served as Prime Minister of Albania in 1924.

Last year, 199 names were approved, including in honor of the late media billionaire Sumner Redstone, the late Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, ‘Ibrahim al-Hamdi Way’ for the former president of Yemen who was assassinated in 1977 , a Sherpa from the Napalese mountains, the US Navy victims of Pearl Harbor, the songwriters of Tin Pan Alley from the early 1920s, as well as the famous New York Yankee Phil “Scooter” Rizutto.

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“New York City should still take this opportunity to rename the street and thumb its nose at the North Korean dictatorship. Otto’s life could be even more important as a strong sign against totalitarianism,” he said. said New York City Councilman Joe Borelli, a Republican from Staten. Island, who raised the issue and met with the Warmbiers in 2019, as did the powers of council members.

Former Manhattan Borough President and current Democratic City Councilman Gale Brewer noted that “Manhattanites – and all New Yorkers – have always cared about the world because many of us came from elsewhere. So it’s personal for us to always seek justice on the world stage…and co-naming Second Avenue from 43rd to 44th Street is a small way to keep Otto’s memory alive.”

The Council Member Powers office did not respond to a request for comment regarding Ms Warmbier’s tweet or the councillor’s current stance on honoring the memory of Otto Warmbier.