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Giuliani Attacks the “Giuliani-as-Hitler” Signs
by Robert Lederman, Artistpres@aol.com
(718) 369-2111
http://www.openair.org/alerts/artist/nyc.html
Mayor Giuliani continues to lie and distort the facts on protest signs in the
Diallo and other recent demonstrations. Since the Mayor is being given so many
opportunities to comment on our signs it seems only fair to give us, the signmakers,
a chance to rebut his comments. I request an opportunity to debate and/or discuss
this issue in print and on radio and television news shows, ideally with the
Mayor or a representative of his administration present to represent their side.
Firstly, as a Jew and as an organizer, participant in and sign maker for the
anti-Giuliani movement during the past six years I can state that there was
not one single ant-Semitic sign in any demonstration about the shooting of Amadou
Diallo. In the demonstrations held at Foley Square, the Bronx courthouse, One
Police Plaza, Wall Street or across the Brooklyn Bridge, there were never more
than a total of four or five signs that referred to the KKK, none of which were
made by myself or members of A.R.T.I.S.T. In all of those demonstrations I can
recall only two signs that had a swastika.
In all of those demonstrations there were thousands of signs that members of
A.R.T.I.S.T. did make and take full credit for. As most people know by now,
I’ve made hundreds of paintings of the Mayor with a Hitler-like mustache, as
well as countless signs that say, “Giuliani = Police State”, “Arrest Adolf Fooliani”,
“Impeach Giuliani” etc. Other members of A.R.T.I.S.T. have created the “Arrest
Giuliani”, “Impound Giuliani”, “Prosecute Giuliani”and similar signs by the
thousands.
These signs are actively sought out by participants in these and other demos.
Sometimes, when the supply doesn’t meet the demand, people fight over them or
try to buy them from us. To suggest that these signs are anti-Semitic or could
be compared to those in a David Duke rally as the Mayor said, is absurd. None
of these signs laud Hitler. An admirer of Hitler would be horrified at these
signs which mock Hitler and the Nazis in every imaginable way. None of these
signs equate the NYPD with Nazis. None of them attack Jewish people or denigrate
the Holocaust. In fact, Jewish people and members of the NYPD are among our
greatest fans and are often collectors of these signs.
The purpose of these signs is to draw people’s attention to the similarity
between some of Giuliani’s policies and those of Adolf Hitler and other repressive
dictators. They specifically comment on the Mayor’s racism; his attacks on freedom
of speech; his habit of ordering his critics arrested; his war on the homeless
and the poor; his policy of confiscating and forfeiting private property regardless
of due process; his “bunker mentality”; his attacks on media freedom; his notion
of issuing hollowpoint bullets to the police; his “work shall make you free”
workfare initiative; his Hitler-like obsession with stadium building; his desire
to fingerprint and take DNA samples from all newborn children; his cross-dressing
at the same time he persecutes gays, and his privatization and corporatization
agendas to name but a few.
The history of our making these signs is directly related to the street artist
issue. The first group the Mayor attacked when he came into office was street
artists, ordering hundreds of us arrested along with the confiscation and destruction
of our art. When the Mayor filed legal briefs claiming that visual art was not
expression, conveyed no ideas and was therefore unworthy of First Amendment
protection, we held a City Hall press conference at which I promised to fill
the streets of New York City with portraits of the Mayor that would show how
very expressive art can be. These signs are the result.
Despite winning our lawsuit in 1996 the Mayor has continued his attempts to
rid the streets of artists. I’ve actually been arrested far more times since
winning the suit than I had been before. Hundreds of these “Giuliani as Hitler”
portraits have been confiscated during lawful demonstrations. I and other A.R.T.I.S.T.
members that were carrying them have been repeatedly arrested although not one
of us has ever been found guilty. During my 36 arrests to date the level of
police officer involved has steadily risen to the point where I am routinely
arrested by NYPD captains and by the NYPD Intelligence Division. On a number
of occasions I’ve been arrested while painting one of these Giuliani portraits.
During the 4/15/99 protest march across the Brooklyn Bridge undercover police
officers posing as members of A.R.T.I.S.T. went through the crowd on Broadway
and “collected” hundreds of our signs from fellow protesters before the march
was over. This action was a matter of outright theft and shows how desperate
the Mayor is to surpress these signs.
Even if one completely disagrees with our viewpoint about Giuliani it is hard
to dispute our First Amendment right to create, disseminate and carry these
images and mottos. What the Mayor, Police Commissioner Safir, the Mayor’s defenders
at the Post and others have completely avoided is why thousands of people would
want to carry a sign comparing Mayor Giuliani to Hitler. Are they all just mindless
sheep that will hold any sign someone offers them? Why would people throw down
their own homemade sign in order to carry one of ours if they didn’t fully accept
the message? And most importantly, why does the Mayor feel it is necessary to
spend so much time denouncing, supressing, censoring and otherwise attacking
these signs?
There’s much more to this controversy than is being addressed in the media
so far. I hope that the media will give us a fair opportunity to respond to
the Mayor and to air the facts concerning these signs.
“During his radio show Friday, Mayor Giuliani concentrated not on the substance
of the placards carried by the 10 march leaders, but on the slogans touted by
many at the back of the pack. Citing a poster that showed a swastika across
the insignia of the New York Police Department and others that compared the
Mayor to Hitler and the department to the Ku Klux Klan, Giuliani invoked David
Duke to denounce, again, the tone of the demonstrations. "Just consider for
one moment if David Duke came to New York City, assembled 4,000, 5,000 or 10,000
people, whatever the number you want to say the march was, and in that march
there were 10 people that had signs with hateful, racist and anti-Semitic language
attached to it," the Mayor said.” -NY Times April 17, 1999-”After the Protests
Turning Slogans Into Substance”
“Speaking on his weekly WABC radio show, Giuliani depicted the demonstration
as a hate march and a virtual failure, considering the turnout, which fell short
of organizers' predictions. The protest was peaceful, but signs depicted "pictures
of Nazi storm troopers, the word 'racist' used constantly all over the place,
the 'NYPD=KKK' sign," he said. -Daily News 4/17/99
“But the Mayor repeated his anger over signs and chants at the post-Diallo
protests that liken him to Adolf Hitler. "The comparisons to Hitler, Adolf Hitler,
and fascism have to stop, because they're sick, perverted, and they do affect
some people," he said. "Invocations of Adolf Hitler are despicable no matter
who it is. Nobody should participate in it, and nobody should do it." -NY Times
Sunday March 28, 1999-“After Meeting Mayor Vows Major Changes for Police”
“The Mayor, for his part, sought to balance his remarks on the protests by
expressing his sympathy for the Diallo family, his support for the Police Department
and his anger at the personal attacks against him. He complained that several
protesters held aloft signs that compared him to Adolf Hitler and the Police
Department to the Ku Klux Klan. "As the Police Department has made substantial
changes in the way in which it behaves, not only in the last month or two but
over the last five years," Mayor Giuliani said, "I'd ask people to acknowledge
that and then to make the similar kinds of changes in their behavior. Not stand
with people who try to pretend that the Police Department is the KKK, not engage
in general bashing of the Police Department, stop the invocations of Hitler
and Nazism and fascism, all this exaggerated hate rhetoric. It has an impact."
-NY Times 3/30/99 “Indictments of 4 Officers in the Diallo Killing Are Due Tuesday”
"It's time that we show them as a city more respect," Guiliani said of the
city's officers. "As we ask the Police Department to show more respect and we
make Herculean efforts -- they do -- to show more respect, we have something
we have a right to demand. We have a right to demand more respect from the citizens
of the city for the police officers of the city of New York." In reference to
the protests outside Police Headquarters in Manhattan and the Bronx courthouse,
the Mayor continued: "And it's about time to stop carrying signs pretending
that they are racist. It's about time to stop carrying signs equating them to
the K.K.K., and it's about time to stop invocations of Adolf Hitler about our
Police Department." -4/1/99 New York Times “The Mayor: In Honoring an Officer,
an Impassioned Plea”
“His voice choking with emotion and his fists clenched for emphasis, Mayor
Giuliani yesterday demanded "respect and understanding" for his cops in the
fiercest speech he has delivered since the killing of Amadou Diallo. Just two
hours before four cops were charged with Diallo's murder — and only 3 miles
from the Bronx courthouse — Giuliani urged protesters to lay down their "racist
signs" and begged New Yorkers to stop second-guessing the NYPD. "It's about
time to stop carrying signs pretending police officers are racists," the mayor
told 175 cheering cops. "It's about time to stop carrying signs equating them
to the KKK. And it's about time to stop carrying signs that invoke Adolf Hitler
about our police." As he stood at the red-brick stationhouse, Giuliani attacked
police "bashers" as "the worst elements in society." -Daily News 4/1/99 “The
Mayor Rails Vs. Cop Bashers”
Are you personally stung by those signs at the demonstrations that say 'Adolf
Giuliani'? Five years ago I might have cried over it. And now I just feel that
this is a crazy exaggeration that we've allowed, and that our media coverage
is selective... You cover Susan Sarandon. But [the police and the rest of the
city] see the Adolf Hitler signs, the comparisons to the president of Yugoslavia.
These [demonstrators] are getting arrested, some knowingly, some unknowingly,
under that banner. -Newsweek 4/5/99 Rudy on the Record
“We'll say it simply: Just because people don't like Rudy Giuliani doesn't
give them license to compare him to Adolf Hitler. The Hitler analogy is something
that seems to amuse many people in this city. Cutesy stories have been written
and published in the past week about an art installation on Madison Avenue called
No York in which the mayor is depicted with a Hitler moustache. This image was
first bandied about by an obnoxious twerp who claims to represent a group called
A.R.T.I.S.T. - but which really ought to be called M.O.R.O.N. - who is outraged
that the mayor attempted to enforce plainly written statutes regarding sidewalk
clutter in front of the Metropolitan Museum. For this, the twerp (whose name
we shall never again use because he deserves no more public mention) imagines
that Rudy Giuliani deserves comparison with the personification of evil in this
century...As the New York Times' gleeful seizure of the "bunker" story indicates,
you don't have to be a cabbie, a vendor or a M.O.R.O.N. to issue forth such
repulsive opinions. -NY Post Editorial 6/16/98
"I don't regard associations of my people that support me as fascists as a
light matter ....But it's ultimately the results that matter.” -NY TIMES 6/24/98
"I take a different view of someone comparing me to Adolf Hitler than when
someone calls me a jerk." Mayor Giuliani, N.Y. Daily News 10/25/1998
“Giuliani said Spitzer's remarks should disqualify him from holding office.
“I think his remarks are insulting to a lot of Jewish people, for the overstated
use of the Hitler and Nazi phraseology, and I'm really surprised that he would
engage in that kind of language”, the mayor fumed.” N.Y. Post 10/15/98 “Hitler
Remark Sparks Pol Feud”
“Giuliani also lashed out yesterday at a reporter who asked him whether there
was a difference between Spitzer's comments and those of Police Commissioner
Howard Safir, who called former Nation of Islam spokesman Khallid Muhammad a
"black Hitler" after the Million Youth March last month. Giuliani replied, "There's
a difference between Khallid Muhammad and me, and if you can't figure it out,
you probably shouldn't be in the journalistic profession."10/19/1998 Newsday
10/19/98
“No wonder they loathe him so. He is a transformative politician, as Margaret
Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were - and like them, he has earned enemies who casually
toss out words like 'fascist'' and 'Hitler'' when they disagree with him.” Post
editorial 4/15/99-IT'S TIME TO SPEAK OUT FOR THE CITY - AND RUDY
“Seeking out reporters as he left City Hall about 7:15 p.m., Giuliani suggested
that the controversial advertisements depicting a black youth frightened by
police officers, as well as signs comparing the mayor and the police force to
Nazis, may have backfired. ...The peaceful, controlled nature of the event stood
in marked contrast to the last rally of a similar size, when Giuliani -- who
was not yet mayor -- joined about 10,000 police officers at City Hall to protest
Dinkins' plans for the Civilian Complaint Review Board in 1992. That demonstration
spun out of control, with officers damaging cars and storming the Brooklyn Bridge,
and many protesters spewing profanity and racial epithets. NY Times 4/16/99-Diallo
Rally Focuses on Call for Strong Oversight of Police
"If we don't strike a balance between aggressive enforcement and common sense,"
Savage said, "it becomes a blueprint for a police state and tyranny." PBA President
James Savage on Giuliani’s policies, NY Times 4/14/99
“He also blasted the anti-cop and anti-mayor sentiment. "I think the negative
part is that many of the signs ... are highly offensive and racist in nature
... There was a sign that had the New York Police Department shield with a Nazi
swastika superimposed over it. There were signs using rather broadly the term
racist and invocations to Hitler, to some of the things that are going on in
the Balkans ..." Giuliani complained. -POST 4/16/99 -10,000 RALLY FOR 'JUSTICE'
NY Post 4/17/99
RUDY BLASTS DIALLO MARCHERS WHO COMPARED
HIM TO HITLER
A day after calling the Amadou Diallo police-brutality rally "peaceful," Mayor
Giuliani lashed out at the protesters for carrying "hate" signs and trying to
"manipulate" New Yorkers.
The organizers, including the Rev. Al Sharpton and former Mayor David Dinkins,
immediately fired back, citing Giuliani's involvement in a violent 1992 cop
rally where some police officers tried to storm City Hall.
On his weekly WABC radio show, Giuliani blasted the demonstrators who marched
across the Brooklyn Bridge carrying signs comparing him to Adolf Hitler, and
the NYPD to the Ku Klux Klan.
The mayor also blasted the media for not asking "how could people participate
in a march like this, how could people speak to a group like this, that carried
signs like that?
"Unfortunately, no one is being held to account for joining in or associating
with a march that had hate signs like that," Giuliani said.
Dinkins, who coordinated the march with Sharpton and Local 1199 leader Dennis
Rivera and who was in office during the 1992 cop protest, promptly pointed out
Giuliani's role in that rally.
"I would ask him to compare it with the riot when the cops stormed City Hall,
some of them drunk, overturned a vehicle ... and he was standing a block away
talking to the cops, egging them on," Dinkins said.
"I guess he thinks the public has a short memory. Well, I remember."
Dinkins acknowledged there were "a few signs that were inappropriate," but
said "there were not a lot of them."
Weeks of effort and more than $300,000 worth of advertising went into the protest,
which focused on the police shooting of African immigrant Diallo and had the
backing of two of the city's biggest unions, Local 1199 and District Council
37.
Yesterday the mayor derided the march for "significantly" low attendance, which
NYPD spokeswoman Marilyn Mode put at 4,500 people, even while police brass said
it was closer to 10,000.
"This is not the only thing people in New Yor
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