--------- Forwarded message ---------- From: ARTISTpres at aol.com To: undisclosed-recipients:; Date: Wed, 17 Feb 1999 18:26:12 -0600 (CST) Subject: "Giuliani On The Brink", pg 1 2/17/99 NY Press Message-ID: <bulk.16340.19990218121554 at chumbly.math.missouri.edu>
New York Press 2/17-23/99 pg. 1 Giuliani On The Brink
Now We Know Why He Needs a Bunker by Robert Lederman
On the stage of City Halls Blue Room Rudolph Giuliani stiffly paces back and forth before easels displaying charts and graphs, his oversized head appearing to float gas-filled above his body. Wielding a long pointer he occasionally whacks it against the charts to awaken the audience of dozing officials and skeptical reporters.
In order to explain how four white cops shot an unarmed West African street vendor nineteen times Giuliani is using bar graphs. Contrary to what the Diallo episode suggests the visual aids attempt to prove that the NYPD is a model of restraint. One bar shows how seldom they fire their 9millemeter semi-automatics compared to other cops and the next how relatively few unarmed civilians theyve killed each year during his administration.
Outside City Halls concrete barriers and the newly installed ten foot high chain link fence, hundreds of immigrant street artists and vendors are chanting, Impeach Giuliani! Their faces are black, brown, yellow and white. They brandish portraits of the Citys 107th Mayor as Hitler and bullet riddled cardboard placards streaked with dripping red paint. The signs read, Cops Fired 41 shots at vendor and Giuliani Equals Police State.
Looking more like Chaplin in the Great Dictator than the real Hitler, Giuliani believes his charts and graphs can justify the anguish caused by this latest murder of an unarmed black man. Perhaps its Cristyne Lategano, the Mayors communications director and new chief of staff, thats pushing the use of these crisp white charts and bar graphs. If only they understood the statistics, she whispers to Rudy, then theyd realize how great you really are.
Few in the Blue Room audience are buying it. They know Giulianis record of phony statistics involving everything from food stamps to crime. They also know something else. The blame for Amadou Diallos murder should be directed at one man: Rudolph Giuliani.
Instead of reaching out to the Black and Latino community as this crisis develops, he derides its leaders as publicity seekers who just want to get on TV. This from a man on call 24 hours a day to appear at fires, crime scenes and building openings. Rather than calming peoples fears of out of control cops he announces that the NYPD will be given hollowpoint bullets which cause shooting victims massive internal injury and death.
Its unlikely that Giuliani is a racist in the mold of the Klan or white supremacists. He doesnt hate minorities and the poor, they just dont have a place in the corporate fascist police state hes trying to create. Like an efficient CEO eliminating unwanted employees, poor and minority New Yorkers must be downsized in order to increase N.Y.C. Inc.s profits.
His charts tell the whole story. Profits and statistics are what the Giuliani administration is all about. Murders, rapes and police shootings are judged alongside each days stock market and quarterly tax returns. His response to crime is statistically driven and totally focused on enhancing his political image. Its only a crime if it makes the news and shows the Mayor in a bad light. Once an event reaches that critical threshold, be it a murder, a rape or a guy squeegeeing someones car windshield, the elite troops are called into action.
Cops, district attorneys and judges are pressured by the Mayor to achieve impressive statistical results at any cost. Three hundred thousand quality of life arrests in one year is an impressive statistic but the Mayor has no graph showing that there were almost no convictions and that thousands of civil rights lawsuits were filed as a result. There are also no graphs to illustrate the racial tensions these policies are fostering, since-despite the fact that minorities compose a majority of our population-black, Latino and immigrant New Yorkers are being abused and targeted by Giuliani in a thousand different ways.
Of course, the audience Giuliani is performing for does not for the most part live in New York City. That his policies infuriate so many people locally is not especially important to our Mayor now that hes playing to the white Republican voters of Texas, Arizona, Florida and the like.
Citing quality of life concerns to justify every new violation of civil freedom, Giuliani models his governing style on the dynamics of a hostile corporate takeover. The human dimension counts for little in determining his actions.
Despite awkward public relations attempts to make him appear more human by wearing a pink dress or reading to children, he remains coldly rational and mechanistic. In what may be the perfect soundbite to describe his philosophy the Mayor stated, "Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do and how you do it." For Giuliani human society is like an efficient bee hive. Worker bees and drones are here to carry out the Queens orders. Individual suffering is of little consequence to the greater good.
Carrying his freedom is about authority idea to its logical conclusion Giuliani has tried to control everything from sex to the way we cross the street. He seems genuinely surprised that so many people complain. Giuliani expects black and Latino New Yorkers to be grateful that hes ordered his predominately white army of 39,000 cops to illegally stop and search thousands of their young men. After all, a handful of suspects with subway fare beating warrants and some guns have been taken off the street. If innocent people like Amadou Diallo are arrested, beaten or shot nineteen times by the police, were expected to accept it as a small price to pay for an impressive new statistic on the Mayors charts.
The storm of controversy now swirling around Giuliani may signal his undoing. Its no longer only Democrats or left wing activists who oppose him. Republicans like George W. Bush are suddenly less anxious to have him as a houseguest and his campaign, though no one is even certain yet what hes campaigning for, is way behind its scheduled fundraising goals. His bizarre notion that shipping New York Citys garbage to other states is a form of cultural exchange infuriated the Governers of New Jersey and Virginia who publicly denounced him. His administration is simultaneously being investigated by both the Federal and State governments on a number of charges.
The pressures are beginning to show. Like Hitler, the historical figure hes most often compared to, Giuliani may spend his last days huddled in a bunker surrounded by his most faithful supporters. The $15 million dollar bunker was never about protecting government officials from poison gas or terrorists with a nuclear bomb. Giuliani built his bunker to protect him from the fury of the people.
Robert Lederman is President of A.R.T.I.S.T. (Artists Response To Illegal State Tactics). Hes been arrested 34 times for protesting against Giuliani and is best know for his satirical paintings of the Mayor as Hitler. Lederman can be contacted at: (718) 369-2111 ARTISTpres at aol.com
http://www.openair.org/alerts/artist/nyc.html
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