Salon Newsreal | Letter from occupied New York

A L S O+T O D A Y

Michael Jordan's final act
By Dan Brekke
The legend is leaving at the top. That's why we need him to stay
(01/14/99)

T A B L E+T A L K
Speaker Howdy Doody? What do you think of Livingston replacement Dennis Hastert? Get partisan in the Politics area of Table Talk

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Planning a trip to New York? Be sure to check out barnesandnoble.com's great travel books before you go!
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Portrait of a political "pit bull"
By Russ Baker
Rep. Dan Burton, who called President Clinton a "scumbag," has a few questions to answer about his own behavior
(12/22/98)

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R E C E N T L Y
Starr's lowest blow
By Bruce Shapiro
In indicting Julie Hiatt Steele, the independent counsel continues a pattern of bullying women
(01/13/99)
Impeachment diary II
By Anonymous
While senators basked in the glow of Friday's bipartisan trial accord, both sides were already plotting to renew the war
(01/13/99)
Ebonics II
By Lee Hubbard
Oakland students' test scores are among the lowest in the state, but Oakland teachers press ahead with Mumia Abu Jamal teach-in
(01/13/99)
Tainted witness
By Murray Waas
The Arkansas trooper who corroborated David Hale's story received payments from the American Spectator
(01/12/99)
Working class hero?
By Micah L. Sifry
Jesse Ventura will have to reconcile his millionaire libertarian views with his blue collar support
(01/11/99)
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Letter from occupied New York

With City Hall behind barricades, Mayor Rudy Giuliani is getting ready to take his show on the road.

BY JOHN LEONARD | NEW YORK -- Our only mayor, Bob Newhart's Evil Twin, opened the new year in Arizona, where he showed off his crime statistics to the right-wingers at the "Dark Ages" frat blast in Phoenix and took in the Fiesta Bowl football game. During his absence, it rained four inches on us, while three feet of snow fell on Chicago. That very same week we learned New York also had fewer homicides last year than Richard Daley's city on the lake. So not only are there more murders in Chicago than in New York, among 4 million fewer residents, but the weather is worse. Which is another reason for Rudy, after his two terms are up, to run for senator, if not vice president.
Nevertheless, and even though we were very wet, we worried more about the mayor than we did about ourselves, or even Chicago, while he was gone. To say that Rudolph Giuliani is a control freak is to say that Attila the Hun was antsy. There was reason to fear for his mental stability out there in the wild West, in the painted-desert whereabouts of Kit Carson and Zane Grey. Suppose they didn't give him a whirlybird to napalm Thelma and Louise? Suppose those Navajos refused to convert their kivas into condos? Suppose Geronimo demanded more than his fair share of TV face time? What if Grand Canyon mules insisted on crossing at the wrong midtown intersection?
Imagine our relief when Rudy returned to his bunker without conniption. His very first day back, he threatened to defund New York City's Campaign Finance Board because it proposed giving $4 for each one raised privately by candidates for a City Council election next month, if those candidates forswear corporate donations. Although this proposal had been endorsed by a coalition of the League of Women Voters, the Citizens Union, the City Bar Association, the New York Times and Common Cause, the mayor accused them all of "stubbornness," "arrogance" and "intellectual dishonesty." It's the tone he takes not only with critics but with any Chicken Little or Tiny Tim who thinks out loud without his permission -- with judges who say that the voters, instead of Rudy, should decide if the Yankees play baseball in Manhattan or the Bronx; with members of the City Council who override his vetoes; with journalists who want information on how "workfare" is playing out; with the comptroller, the public advocate and the Independent Budget Office, who all had to sue to force him to give them the facts and figures they needed to do their jobs; with City University of New York students who seek in lawful assembly to protest tuition hikes.
The last five years in New York have been less about government than they've been about obedience training. Rudy's a guy with a built-in balcony, from which he barks our marching orders. Lawful assembly, and such free-speechifying as may attend its occasion, are particularly sore points around here. Before he was even elected the first time, in October 1993, candidate Rudy opposed letting Louis Farrakhan speak at Yankee Stadium. In March 1995, a wall of cops surrounded City Hall, with horses, scooters, nightsticks, riot gear, barricades and Mace, to keep 20,000 high school and college students from marching on Wall Street. That June, Rudy kicked Yasir Arafat out of Lincoln Center. The following May, he would use armored cars against homeless squatters. The first official act of his second term, last New Year's Day, was to close his own inauguration to the public, after which he directed the Metropolitan Transit Authority to remove from buses and subways a New York magazine ad that took his name in vain, which was followed by checkpoints and roadblocks in Greenwich Village against anarcho-syndicalists and other rowdies, and video surveillance cameras in Washington Square Park.
When cabbies last spring objected to a new set of onerous regulations, they were met with ridicule by Rudy, an accusation by his police commissioner that a proposed convoy of protesters constituted a "terrorist threat" (wonderfully coded, since many cabbies are Middle Eastern), a deployment of livery drivers as scabs (later ruled unlawful by an appellate court) and an army of cops with tow trucks who closed the East River bridges to any taxi without a fare, forcing angry drivers to walk from Queens and Brooklyn to Manhattan. "They know we broke their strike -- destroyed it really," Rudy boasted. "Nobody showed up today. And that didn't happen just because we allowed business to go on as usual. That happened because we had a plan to stop them from doing it."
In May, when street artists whom he'd hounded from the city sidewalks tried to heckle his appearance at Cooper Union, they were arrested. In September, the city refused a permit to Khallid Abdul Muhammad for his Million Youth March, suggesting that he agitate instead on Randall's Island. And when Muhammad won won his right in court to gather on Malcolm X Boulevard, the cops closed all the subway stations and cross streets so nobody could join in along the route. In December, demonstrators seeking to observe World AIDS Day and mourn the 77,000 New Yorkers who've died of the disease were likewise denied a permit to rally in City Hall Park, and likewise went to court to win their case. Then, when 150 of them showed up, they had to pass through motorcycle cops and metal detectors before they arrived at a parking lot surrounded by a brand-new eight-foot chain-link penitentiary fence and looked down upon by sharpshooters.
Nor was it an accident that the organizer of the rally, Housing Works, had already seen its $6.5 million worth of contracts with the city canceled. Why should a thrift-shop sponsor of drug treatment, job training and employment programs for homeless people with HIV expect anything better from Rudy than, say, the City Council, whose time-servers till a couple of weeks ago were forbidden to stage photo ops on the steps of City Hall because maybe they were closet Montana militiamen. Or Repohistory, denied permission by the Department of Transportation to put up posters commemorating famous civil-liberties cases. Or Bill Weinberg, the radical journalist who spent a night in the Tombs and the following Saturday cleaning up dogshit in Tompkins Square for pasting a "GIULIANI IS A JERK" sticker on a lamppost. It's not as if any of these people were baseball players or astronauts or Disney puppets or Columbus Day Italians.
I am reminded of another great leader, who complained in Moscow in 1920: "Why should freedom of speech and freedom of the press be allowed? Why should a government which is doing what it believes to be right allow itself to be criticized? It would not allow opposition by lethal weapons. Ideas are much more fatal things than guns. Why should any man be allowed to buy a printing press and disseminate pernicious opinions calculated to embarrass the government?" This was Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.
N E X T+P A G E+| Rudy to black community: "They're going to have to learn ..."

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ILLUSTRATION BY TIM BOWER

A L S O+T O D A Y Michael Jordan's final act By Dan Brekke The legend is leaving at the top. That's why we need him to stay (01/14/99) T A B L E+T A L K Speaker Howdy Doody? What do you think of Livingston replacement Dennis Hastert? Get partisan in the Politics area of Table Talk ___________________ Planning a trip to New York? Be sure to check out barnesandnoble.com's great travel books before you go! ___________________ Portrait of a political "pit bull" By Russ Baker Rep. Dan Burton, who called President Clinton a "scumbag," has a few questions to answer about his own behavior (12/22/98) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - R E C E N T L Y Starr's lowest blow By Bruce Shapiro In indicting Julie Hiatt Steele, the independent counsel continues a pattern of bullying women (01/13/99) Impeachment diary II By Anonymous While senators basked in the glow of Friday's bipartisan trial accord, both sides were already plotting to renew the war (01/13/99) Ebonics II By Lee Hubbard Oakland students' test scores are among the lowest in the state, but Oakland teachers press ahead with Mumia Abu Jamal teach-in (01/13/99) Tainted witness By Murray Waas The Arkansas trooper who corroborated David Hale's story received payments from the American Spectator (01/12/99) Working class hero? By Micah L. Sifry Jesse Ventura will have to reconcile his millionaire libertarian views with his blue collar support (01/11/99) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Newsreal Archives - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
		Letter from occupied New York With City Hall behind barricades, Mayor Rudy Giuliani is getting ready to take his show on the road. BY JOHN LEONARD \| NEW YORK -- Our only mayor, Bob Newhart's Evil Twin, opened the new year in Arizona, where he showed off his crime statistics to the right-wingers at the "Dark Ages" frat blast in Phoenix and took in the Fiesta Bowl football game. During his absence, it rained four inches on us, while three feet of snow fell on Chicago. That very same week we learned New York also had fewer homicides last year than Richard Daley's city on the lake. So not only are there more murders in Chicago than in New York, among 4 million fewer residents, but the weather is worse. Which is another reason for Rudy, after his two terms are up, to run for senator, if not vice president. Nevertheless, and even though we were very wet, we worried more about the mayor than we did about ourselves, or even Chicago, while he was gone. To say that Rudolph Giuliani is a control freak is to say that Attila the Hun was antsy. There was reason to fear for his mental stability out there in the wild West, in the painted-desert whereabouts of Kit Carson and Zane Grey. Suppose they didn't give him a whirlybird to napalm Thelma and Louise? Suppose those Navajos refused to convert their kivas into condos? Suppose Geronimo demanded more than his fair share of TV face time? What if Grand Canyon mules insisted on crossing at the wrong midtown intersection? Imagine our relief when Rudy returned to his bunker without conniption. His very first day back, he threatened to defund New York City's Campaign Finance Board because it proposed giving $4 for each one raised privately by candidates for a City Council election next month, if those candidates forswear corporate donations. Although this proposal had been endorsed by a coalition of the League of Women Voters, the Citizens Union, the City Bar Association, the New York Times and Common Cause, the mayor accused them all of "stubbornness," "arrogance" and "intellectual dishonesty." It's the tone he takes not only with critics but with any Chicken Little or Tiny Tim who thinks out loud without his permission -- with judges who say that the voters, instead of Rudy, should decide if the Yankees play baseball in Manhattan or the Bronx; with members of the City Council who override his vetoes; with journalists who want information on how "workfare" is playing out; with the comptroller, the public advocate and the Independent Budget Office, who all had to sue to force him to give them the facts and figures they needed to do their jobs; with City University of New York students who seek in lawful assembly to protest tuition hikes. The last five years in New York have been less about government than they've been about obedience training. Rudy's a guy with a built-in balcony, from which he barks our marching orders. Lawful assembly, and such free-speechifying as may attend its occasion, are particularly sore points around here. Before he was even elected the first time, in October 1993, candidate Rudy opposed letting Louis Farrakhan speak at Yankee Stadium. In March 1995, a wall of cops surrounded City Hall, with horses, scooters, nightsticks, riot gear, barricades and Mace, to keep 20,000 high school and college students from marching on Wall Street. That June, Rudy kicked Yasir Arafat out of Lincoln Center. The following May, he would use armored cars against homeless squatters. The first official act of his second term, last New Year's Day, was to close his own inauguration to the public, after which he directed the Metropolitan Transit Authority to remove from buses and subways a New York magazine ad that took his name in vain, which was followed by checkpoints and roadblocks in Greenwich Village against anarcho-syndicalists and other rowdies, and video surveillance cameras in Washington Square Park. When cabbies last spring objected to a new set of onerous regulations, they were met with ridicule by Rudy, an accusation by his police commissioner that a proposed convoy of protesters constituted a "terrorist threat" (wonderfully coded, since many cabbies are Middle Eastern), a deployment of livery drivers as scabs (later ruled unlawful by an appellate court) and an army of cops with tow trucks who closed the East River bridges to any taxi without a fare, forcing angry drivers to walk from Queens and Brooklyn to Manhattan. "They know we broke their strike -- destroyed it really," Rudy boasted. "Nobody showed up today. And that didn't happen just because we allowed business to go on as usual. That happened because we had a plan to stop them from doing it." In May, when street artists whom he'd hounded from the city sidewalks tried to heckle his appearance at Cooper Union, they were arrested. In September, the city refused a permit to Khallid Abdul Muhammad for his Million Youth March, suggesting that he agitate instead on Randall's Island. And when Muhammad won won his right in court to gather on Malcolm X Boulevard, the cops closed all the subway stations and cross streets so nobody could join in along the route. In December, demonstrators seeking to observe World AIDS Day and mourn the 77,000 New Yorkers who've died of the disease were likewise denied a permit to rally in City Hall Park, and likewise went to court to win their case. Then, when 150 of them showed up, they had to pass through motorcycle cops and metal detectors before they arrived at a parking lot surrounded by a brand-new eight-foot chain-link penitentiary fence and looked down upon by sharpshooters. Nor was it an accident that the organizer of the rally, Housing Works, had already seen its $6.5 million worth of contracts with the city canceled. Why should a thrift-shop sponsor of drug treatment, job training and employment programs for homeless people with HIV expect anything better from Rudy than, say, the City Council, whose time-servers till a couple of weeks ago were forbidden to stage photo ops on the steps of City Hall because maybe they were closet Montana militiamen. Or Repohistory, denied permission by the Department of Transportation to put up posters commemorating famous civil-liberties cases. Or Bill Weinberg, the radical journalist who spent a night in the Tombs and the following Saturday cleaning up dogshit in Tompkins Square for pasting a "GIULIANI IS A JERK" sticker on a lamppost. It's not as if any of these people were baseball players or astronauts or Disney puppets or Columbus Day Italians. I am reminded of another great leader, who complained in Moscow in 1920: "Why should freedom of speech and freedom of the press be allowed? Why should a government which is doing what it believes to be right allow itself to be criticized? It would not allow opposition by lethal weapons. Ideas are much more fatal things than guns. Why should any man be allowed to buy a printing press and disseminate pernicious opinions calculated to embarrass the government?" This was Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. N E X T+P A G E+\| Rudy to black community: "They're going to have to learn ..." - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Become a Salon member. Click here. ILLUSTRATION BY TIM BOWER