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Defending Adolf Giuliani
[The full texts of the editorials referred to are reproduced below]
Despite attempting to sound knowledgeable the 3/31/99 NY Post editorials by
John Podhoretz and Michael Meyers fail to even touch on the real issues behind
the Diallo protests. It’s not the four cops or the NYPD that most of the thousands
of demonstrators who’ve been at 1 Police Plaza or at the Bronx County Courthouse
are enraged about. It’s Mayor Giuliani himself and the racist police state he’s
turned New York City into. It’s not bitterness over losing the last two elections
that caused politicians, movie stars, ex-Mayors, police officials, artists,
ministers, rabbis and masses of the City’s black and Latino population to carry
placards depicting the Mayor as a fascist and as a modern Hitler. It’s the Mayor’s
megalomaniac personality, repressive abuse of authority and race baiting demagoguery.
It’s not Democrats who are being overly partisan when the Mayor of New York
refuses to meet with the Manhattan Borough President and State Comptroller because
they are “political enemies”, i.e. Democrats. Can one imagine such an isolated
man in the U.S. Senate where compromise is the basis for all political action?
Will he cast votes by phone from his bunker? To claim that the civil disobedience
outside police headquarters was phony because the protesters didn’t have to
fear being beaten or murdered by the police and were only held in custody for
a few hours ignores the daily reality for many in this city. Under the Giuliani
regime black and Latino New Yorkers are jailed in the tens of thousands, held
overnight in the filthy cells of the tombs and put through months of meaningless
court appearances for nothing more than riding a bicycle, displaying a painting
or standing in front of their own house. The angry demonstrators who’ve participated
regularly in these protests have spent the past six years subjected to daily
unjustified searches, false arrest, verbal abuse, beatings and worse. Some have
had their friends, children or other unarmed non-criminal relatives shot by
the police. To compare Rev. Sharpton to the now saintly memory of Dr. King in
order to find him wanting ignores a simple fact. King was similarly maligned
as an opportunist and publicity seeker during his time, as was Ghandi. Right
now Al Sharpton is the one black leader putting himself on the line on the issue
of race. It’s quite interesting the way the Mayor and his defenders keep lying
about my “Giuliani as Hitler” paintings and the signs about a “police state”
and “fascism”. These signs all refer directly to the Mayor and his administration
not to the NYPD. If an artist or writer had previously made such comparisons
to any other New York City Mayor they would have been utterly ignored and rejected
by the media and by the public. The Mayor might like to know that the single
biggest group of fans and customers for my Giuliani paintings are white N.Y.C.
police officers. Based on thousands of conversations I’ve had with the police
while in custody during my 36 arrests there is no group of New Yorkers who dislike
the Mayor more. That he is now wrapping himself in the mantle of the NYPD must
disgust all decent officers of New York’s finest. Giuliani, not Rev. Sharpton,
is responsible for soiling the NYPD’s reputation. Justice and peace will be
realized for both sides only when the Mayor resigns or is removed from office.
Then and only then can a real healing begin.
Robert Lederman, President of A.R.T.I.S.T.
(Artists’ Response To Illegal State Tactics)
255 13th Street
Brooklyn, N.Y. 11215
(718) 369-2111
e mail ARTISTpres@aol.com
http://www.openair.org/alerts/artist/nyc.html
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NY Post 3/31/99
THEY'RE AFTER RUDY, NOT JUSTICE
By JOHN PODHORETZ
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There's nothing a member of the liberal Establishment hates as much as a conservative
anti-Establishmentarian. THE battle royal over police brutality that has erupted
in this city in the wake of the Diallo shooting is actually the same battle
Rudy Giuliani has been waging since he took office - just in another guise.
After all, who was the first major figure busted in the self-righteous arrest-a-thon
down at police headquarters? None other than his rival in the 1989 and 1993
elections, David Dinkins.
That in itself should have made it clear just how bitterly personal the supposed
''civil disobedience'' campaign really was. But for the enemies of Giuliani,
the personal is political.
For example, how many times have you heard in the past few months that Giuliani
can't possibly understand minority feelings about the police because he doesn't
have enough black or Hispanic friends?
We've just spent a year being told by the same people that a politician's private
life isn't anybody's business, but apparently that's only true for Democratic
presidents with active sex lives, not Republican mayors who fail to brandish
their acquaintanceships with people of color as human shields against illegitimate
personal assaults.
And consider the complaint, heard over and over again until Giuliani finally
relented last week, that the mayor had somehow shown disrespect to the entire
black community by refusing to meet with Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia
Fields and state Comptroller H. Carl McCall. The idea, obviously, was that Giuliani
wouldn't deal with these two officials solely because they are black.
Giuliani didn't want to meet with Fields and McCall not because they're black,
but because he believes them to be enemies. And is he wrong to think it? Both
are partisan Democrats and strong supporters of his old rival, Dinkins.
If you believe New York's mayor has a particular obligation to meet with the
Manhattan borough president and the state comptroller, fine, attack him for
that. But those who have been letting Giuliani have it on this point evidently
believe that Fields and McCall deserve some kind of special treatment from Giuliani
just because of their skin color.
In fact, the attitude of the political Establishment in New York these past
two months has been that Giuliani is insensitive to the complaints of minorities
because he isn't paying enough patronizing deference to those complaints.
The mayor honestly and truly does not believe that the NYPD is routinely abusive
and horrible toward minorities, and so he doesn't say it. He has the facts on
his side, tons and tons of facts. What has defeated him is that ''the facts
don't matter,'' as the Village Voice's Peter Noel has repeatedly said. What
matters is that minorities are feeling oppressed, so obviously they are oppressed.
In this circumstance the only thing a politician can possibly say is ''I feel
your pain'' - and Giuliani has come very close in the past week to uttering
those Clintonite words.
From the beginning of the Diallo mess, the mayor has been under fire and standing
almost entirely alone. That's nothing new for him. Ever since he defeated Dinkins
in 1993, Giuliani has been an amazingly solitary figure in the city, fighting
for change against a political and cultural Establishment that neither wants
nor sees the need for change.
Indeed, the fact that he is a conservative and his enemies are mostly liberal
does not obscure the truth: Giuliani is an anti-Establishment politician.
And there's nothing a member of the liberal Establishment hates as much as
a conservative anti-Establishmentarian. That's why he so enrages his foes, to
the point that they happily march alongside caricatures depicting him as Hitler.
That's why, in the interest of discrediting him, they are willing to make common
cause with Al Sharpton, whom they would ordinarily revile.
What is the liberal Establishment in New York City? It's the umbrella term
for the institutions and people who believe in the conventional wisdom about
what's good and bad for the city, whatever the conventional wisdom happens to
be at any given time. Its leading institutions include forces as various as
the New York Times, the Gay Men's Health Crisis, Planned Parenthood, the American
Jewish Committee, the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations and the professoriat
from Columbia to CUNY.
Giuliani's entire mayoralty is a rebuke and a challenge to the prevailing consensus
of this liberal Establishment, a consensus that governed the city in the 30-plus
years before he took office. According to the consensus, the primary obligation
of city government was to provide rather than to protect.
That idea, which probably sounds perfectly acceptable to you, was actually
a revolutionary change in a democratic society like ours. Rather than serving
as the protector of last resort - policing streets to maintain public safety,
picking up garbage and putting out fires to maintain public health, building
schools and libraries to maintain a citizenry with the ability to govern itself
- New York became a provider.
As provider, the city government was explicitly given the power to act as parent
and spouse and doctor and minister to city residents - who were seen less as
self-governing citizens than as dependents who needed to be taken care of. The
means: welfare, nursing care, hospital beds, an unlimited ''right to housing,''
you name it, the city was to provide it. Any argument to the contrary - that
these policies destroyed character and individual initiative - was deemed heartless,
vicious, unfeeling.
Giuliani has actively sought to reverse this, to return the city government
to its original role as protector, not provider. That's the reason the liberal
Establishment hates him, and that's why it has used the horrific killing of
Amadou Diallo as a way to destroy his effectiveness - and end his political
career.
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Post 3/31/99
AL'S 'CIVIL-RIGHTS COALITION': A TRAVESTY OF DR.
KING'S DREAM
By MICHAEL MEYERS ------------------------------------------------------------------------
BY indicting four cops in the death of Amadou Diallo, the Bronx grand jury
has satisfied Al Sharpton's thirst for justice - for now: He's declared a cessation
of his daily assembly of celebrities and activists for mug shots and arrest
at One Police Plaza. And so comes the steady stream of analysis as to how the
''more responsible'' Sharpton, to quote Ed Koch, has saved our town.
Koch says that, from his hospital bed, he advised Mayor Giuliani to do what
he and other white liberals have done, proudly - recognize, talk with and advise
with Sharpton. It is the oldest of liberal pastimes, exercised with missionary
zeal: explaining, dialoguing and coopting (excuse - cooperating with) the indigenous
leaders of blacks.
The old-fashioned liberals think that, by shaking hands with Sharpton, inviting
him into the Blue Room or to dinner at Gracie Mansion, the mayor would not only
help ease racial tensions but revive his own standing in the polls.
Except maybe Rudy Giuliani knows, notwithstanding the advice from former political
advisers and the reverend's press agents at the Times, that Al Sharpton is no
Martin Luther King Jr., and that Sharpton himself sees no value in meeting with
the Enemy of the People, as Giuliani has come to be known in black and Hispanic
circles.
Yet even Comptroller Alan Hevesi seems to be caving. On Channel 2 this past
weekend, Hevesi went out of his way to praise both the mayor and the leader
of the non-violent mass protests at police headquarters, for having ''performed
an extraordinary, useful service.'' The public, said Hevesi, now has the message
about police abuse. He, Giuliani and other New Yorkers didn't get it before
because they were preoccupied with other major efforts, like fighting crime
and getting our economy back on track.
In good liberal fashion, Hevesi is doubletalking to both sides of the racial
divide. Surely he's heard the voices of allies who said they joined up with
Sharpton because he was pulling together a ''civil-rights coalition'' reminiscent
of the 1960s. The '60s, of course, were a time when demonstrations were massive
- and a time long before paternalism was declared a fatal disease. It's that
disease, which is a form of racism, that blinds liberals to the truth about
demagogues, and leads them to the front of the parade of scoundrels.
That is not to say that those earnestly marching against police brutality are
rabble-rousers. By and large, they're decent people, concerned with improving
social conditions. But can it really be said that those who went down to 1 Police
Plaza to be footsoldiers in Al Sharpton's ''civil disobedience'' campaign were
holding up the banner of Martin L. King, Jr.'s great cause?
Blocking the entrance to Police Plaza was no act of courage or principle; it
was only a symbolic gesture of rage - a gesture which carried with it a demand
for the arrest of the four cops. Unlike Dr. King's protests, these sit-ins had
nothing to do with breaking an unjust law or calling public attention to that
law's idiocy and effrontery to humanity. There was no chance that those arrested
would be subject to police brutality, their lives in jeopardy, while in custody
- things that Dr. King often bravely risked in order to shame and try to convert
his foes.
In effect, King practiced the philosophy of personal suffering and of love.
I dare say that he would have denounced those bigoted signs and banners equating
the NYPD with the KKK, and depicting the mayor as ''Adolf Giuliani.''
Did the Rev. Sharpton protest those signs? Did any of the Jewish leaders or
other white liberals who stood with him to rightly decry police brutality also
demand that those carrying such calumny not be allowed to distract from a message
of reconciliation?
It's a long stretch to believe that racial reconciliation was or is Sharpton's
purpose. And so it amazes that civic and civil-rights leaders, lawyers, ministers
and public officials would walk at ease with his haters.
King did not sling rhetorical mud and a thousand barbs and slanders at people
wrestling with what to do that would be honorable, fair and decent. Comparisons
of Rudy Giuliani and Bull Connor are wrong - factually and morally. Such rhetorical
excess is the height of irresponsibility, and a travesty of the methods of Dr.
King.
Of course, the mercurial mayor, who one day is ''colorblind,'' and the next
is reassigning cops to street duty by race, is no student of Dr. King either.
All of the above is very, very sad, coming as it does only a week before the
31st anniversary of King's assassination. Dr. King was a preacher man interested
in politics as a remedy to discrimination and injustice; he never himself ran
for elected office. But those in elected office had to deal with the morality
of his cause, in part because they knew, and his followers knew, he had no designs
on the political office, only on doing God's will.
In stark contrast, we now have preachers who yearn to be politicians, and politicians
who've turned to preaching as tools of self-promotion and self-preservation.
They're basking in the limelight of notoriety - linked arm-in-arm, in the name
of Martin L. King Jr., and indulging themselves in a charade of power and a
mockery of civil disobedience. Sad, very sad, that the killing of Dr. King's
dream continues, 31 years after the assassin's evil deed.
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