'Long Live Radical Communism:' Election Results Prompt A New Sign

SUNNYSIDE, QUEENS — A day after the city’s primary election, campaign posters are being taken down across the five boroughs, but in northwest Queens a new cinema marquee sign has gone up, demonstrating how some people feel about the likely primary election outcome.

“Ciafone Lost Again Long Live Radical Communism,” reads the marquee sign at the shuttered Center Cinemas site, which is owned by attorney and northwest Queens city council candidate John Ciafone.

The message was put up overnight, during which time progressive frontrunner Tiffany Cabán declared victory in the Democratic primary for District 22’s City Council seat, outpacing Ciafone, a more conservative candidate in the primary who ran in opposition to so-called “communist” contenders.

Ciafone told Patch that the group behind the sign’s message “espouse hate. They hate the police, they hate the country, and they don’t want any gentrification,” he said, alluding to other signs that have been put up on the marquee during the past six months, including one that criticized his choice to develop the Queens Boulevard cinema.

The group behind the signs, which goes by Sunnyside Soyboy, is a self-described “autonomous collective” of “performative anarchists.”

Early on Wednesday morning, Sunnyside Soyboy took responsibility for the sign, writing in a news release: “While it’s hard to rejoice over some of the candidates that won last night, we can at least come together and celebrate some of those that didn’t” — pointing at Ciafone.

The collective criticized Ciafone for keeping the cinema vacant — a choice that they believe he is making in order to sell the site at a higher price in the future — and wrote that the district as a whole is now “plagued” with developers who “don’t care about us; they care about money.”

Ciafone believes that the sign-posters are emboldened by the politics of some people running for office in the district.

“In my race there were candidates that want to take people’s property and redistribute it and eliminate police [and] jails. That’s extreme radical socialism,” said Ciafone, pointing out that he joined the race in order to run in opposition to those stances.

Cabán herself, who was endorsed by the New York City Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), ran on a platform of ending the city’s carceral system and defunding the New York City Police Department — stances which her constituents proudly support.

On Wednesday morning, Zachariah Boyer, a District Leader representing Astoria and East Elmhurst who supported Cabán’s campaign, tweeted an image of the cinema marquee, noting that the message of “long live radical communism” is “correct.”

The comments quickly filled with enthusiastic shows of support. “Well I love this,” wrote one. “This is amazing,” wrote another.

Although the District 22 City Council Democratic primary race has not officially been called, Cabán has led the first-choice, in-person vote count since Tuesday night, and declared victory after securing just under half of the vote.

As of Wednesday morning, Cabán had won 49.3 percent of the votes, followed by Evie Hantzopoulos — another progressive leader — at 26.2 percent, and Ciafone at 9.3 percent.

Ciafone told Patch that he believes this outcome “doesn’t represent the will of the community,” in part because of what he perceives to be low voter turnout levels.

Over 13,865 people turned out to vote in person in the District 22 election this year, which is 3,000 less than the total number of votes for the seat in 2013 — the last time when the race wasn’t won by an incumbent. However, the 2021 count doesn’t take into account absentee ballots yet, which will likely add to the total.

Ciafone also said that the results of the election are because of “chicanery.”

“A lot of the people I spoke to when I was campaigning at the end didn’t understand what a lot of the candidates were about,” he said, adding that some candidates were “very sneaky in saying public safety on their literature when they want to defund the police, [and] some of them want to eliminate jails.”

In her acceptance statement Cabán — who has not minced words during the campaign when it comes to her stance on police and jails — was clear that her campaign is one for “working families here in Queens and across New York City.”

“Tonight, our movement won. We have made it clear that the political will is there and we are ready to fight unapologetically and urgently for the communities we deserve,” she wrote.

Wednesday's results include only the first-choice, in-person votes cast in District 22, where the primary race has not officially been called as of Wednesday afternoon.

Final results will not be known until mid-July at the latest, when absentee ballots have been counted and voters' second through fifth choices have been factored into the ranked-choice calculation.