Mark Green: Son of Giuliani By Robert Lederman
In the 1930's and 40's sequels were made to the most successful Hollywood horror films. Like most sequels, Son of Frankenstein, Son of Dracula and Son of Kong were not as successful either artistically or financially as the originals they were based on. If NYC Public Advocate Mark Green's speech today at the NY Law School is any indication, Son of Giuliani, Mr. Green's intended sequel to the Giuliani administration's reign of repression and terror in New York City, will fare no differently.
I thought Mark Green was a liberal until reading an interview published in the Daily News on 1/23/2000 entitled Did You Say Mayor Green? In it he lavishly praises Giuliani and outlines some of what he plans to do when and if he succeeds Giuliani as Mayor. It's clear from the interview that Giuliani's Police State New York will be under no threat from Mayor Mark Green.
If Green is to be taken at his word, he may actually create an even more repressive urban climate than Giuliani has done. Just look at what he's got in mind-a continuation and expansion of some of the most repressive policies that Giuliani and his wealthy right-wing contributors came up with. In the interview he proposes an end to parole; seizing cars of reckless drivers even if they are acquitted at trial; a DNA databank (built up by taking DNA from hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers arrested each year on misdemeanor non-criminal violations) and expanding the Community Courts (criminal courts financed and run by business interests like the Times Square BID).
Under Giuliani being a teen in NY is virtually synonymous with being a criminal, yet Public Advocate Green seems to want to criminalize even more teenagers than Giuliani has done. According to Green, "We'll have to insist on making kids pay for even the most minor quality-of-life offenses...by developing community courts, where law enforcement officers and prosecutors - rather than a full blown court - metes out punishments like forcing restitution or requiring community service." Sound like a nice streamlined system? It is. Let's do away with costly civil rights, due process, legal aid defense lawyers and (at least in theory) impartial judges and let the cops, prosecutors and corporations handle crime and punishment. The "guilty" can be put to work chain gang style for the very business interests that financed the court they were convicted in.
Sound improbable? Just check out the 54th Street Community Court, built, financed and operated by the Fifth Avenue Association and the Times Square BID. What happens to "criminals" (homeless people, vendors, street artists, musicians, prostitutes, public urinators) 90% of whom are minorities in the 54th Street Community Court Mr. Green so admires? They are assigned to do clean-up jobs ("community service") for the BIDs without pay. Get enough people on that kind of work detail and you'll even threaten the job security of WEP workers who labor in exchange for their welfare check and food stamps.
NYC Public Advocate Mark Green will be sharing the podium at the NY Law School today (1/30/2000) with Mayor Giuliani, who frequently expresses an intense dislike for Mr. Green. Perhaps Mr. Green is simply trying to reassure the wealthy corporate interests that are so enamored of Mayor Giuliani's "making the trains run on time", privatization and criminalization approach to government that they have nothing to fear from a Green Administration. Let's hope he's just trying to put one over on them.
On the other hand if Mark Green is intent on producing and starring in a sequel to Giuliani's bloodletting of the poor, of minorities, of the homeless, of teenagers, of street artists and of vendors let him take note that while he may get the backing of the elite by making such a speech he isn't going to sell many tickets to the eight million audience members he needs on election day. -----------------------------------------------
Daily News 1/23/2000 Did You Say Mayor Green? If he takes over for Giuliani, the old liberal may show some surprising new spots
Mayor Green. How does it look? How does it sound? How does it feel? Whatever your answer, you may as well start dealing with it - because if Rudy Giuliani beats Hillary Clinton in November, then by law, New York's Public Advocate, Mark Green, will automatically become mayor.
Yes, it would only be until the next mayoral election in 2001, but those capable of conjuring periods of time greater than nanoseconds already are thinking about what a Mayor Green would mean for New York. And that includes Green himself - who says that "if it comes out that way, you'll note that by law there would be only one word before my name - 'Mayor.' Not 'Acting Mayor' or 'Interim Mayor.' Just 'Mayor.'"
That observation suggests an activist agenda from the start, rather than a year of treading water as Green positions himself to run flat-out for a full, four-year term. But it's more complicated than that, as it always is with Green, who despite a reputation for liberal bombast is smart and reflective and more ideologically mainstream than his usual rhetoric suggests. In his first extended interview on the subject - and in an advance look at a speech he'll deliver Friday at New York Law School that will begin the process of laying out his vision of a post-Giuliani New York - Green opened up. This wasn't an easy call. As a Democrat, Green is officially apoplectic at the prospect of Hillary losing the Senate race. "It's really inappropriate and politically messy to speculate about what I'd do if I became mayor as a result of her loss," says Green, "but the speech on Friday and this discussion with you hints at it."
Green appears seriously sobered by the prospect of finally becoming mayor, an introspection that combines a greater appreciation of Giuliani's successes than he has ever admitted before and a self-portrayal of himself as a centrist New Democrat in the mold of Bill Clinton.
"Those who need to call someone the 'New Giuliani' or the 'anti-Giuliani' will be disappointed with me because my politics are not really monochromatic," says Green. Which means "there is a lot of what Rudy has done that I support and respect and would continue. For instance, even though I think he has over-alibied the behavior of bad cops and I would beef up the civilian complaint system, I favor just about all of his police reforms, both in place and as proposed. I support greater precinct accountability, an end to parole, the seizure of cars of those who drive recklessly and the establishment of a DNA data bank to help catch criminals.
"In education policy, while I think Rudy has unfairly bashed teachers, I applaud the end of principal tenure, the end of social promotion and his desire to radically change an anachronistic board of education that is really accountabile to no one." At bottom, says Green with a chuckle that indicates how self-serving it sounds, "I'd keep the good and throw out the bad." But then he gets serious: "I'd do it like Clinton and Tony Blair did when they succeeded conservative predecessors. I'd learn from Rudy and eagerly adopt what's worked well."
Beyond specific policies, Green seems genuinely impressed by what he has learned from observing Giuliani at close range. "I admire the way Rudy briefs himself on issues," he says. "He knows it all before he speaks. I admire how he is hands-on in implementing his policies. I admire how he focuses on a problem and doesn't lose that focus until he's achieved a solution. Most of all," says Green quietly, "I admire how Rudy is a leader, not merely a broker. "
But that doesn't mean Green would ever want to be a Rudy II. "You can be tough and kind," he says. "A lot of people believe that Rudy has proved that you have to be an SOB to be mayor. I reject that. You don't have to have a government by enemies list, as he has. You don't have to have a good idea - like reforming the city charter - and then break the speed limit as you try and implement it. You can join in objecting to a a painting at the Brooklyn Museum - if that's your view - without seeking to de-fund a great municipal institution in the process. "In other words," says Green, "you can have brains and backbone and heart and not have to sacrifice any one for the other."
"We can't go on like this and have a mayor, like Rudy, who can't go to a Puerto Rican Day parade or a Martin Luther King event without being booed. So, again, I say you can be, you have to be, both tough and kind - but I admit that you can't prove being that type of mayor can work until you're actually there."
And if he is there? "Well, besides the very dramatic stylistic differences," says Green, the programatic emphasis would shift. "Rudy's made the city safer and for that he deserves all the credit in the world. Now it's time to make the city smarter." To Green, that catchy phrase means emphasizing education reform - "things like smaller class size and better teachers" - and "making sure we're the Internet city of the future."
Many of Green's proposals will be costly - and he's yet to say what a Green budget would look like. But considering just his education plans offers a glimpse at the promise he represents and the trouble he'll likely have delivering on it. For while no one could dispute the need to reduce class size in the public schools, Green's insistence that the teachers' union "is not too powerful" is not a conclusion that fills one with hope for the prospects of reform.
It's in the area of Giuliani's greatest strength- crime control - that Green reflects his new (or at least previously well hidden) centrism. On Friday, Green will call for what he calls "The Big Deal." What "I am trying to do," he says, "is bring together two needs - the need for after-school programs with the notion that no crime should go unpunished. Right now, many misdemeanors are ignored because the criminal justice system would collapse if they were prosecuted. We can't continue that way. So we need to have after school mentoring and tutoring programs but, as a reciprocal obligation, we'll have to insist on making kids pay for even the most minor quality-of-life offenses."
How? "By developing community courts, where law enforcement officers and prosecutors - rather than a full blown court - metes out punishments like forcing restitution or requiring community service."
When, in words that are definitely New Democrat in syle and substance, Green says "the point has to be made that actions have consequences, including punishment that goes beyond meaningless things like probation," you can understand that dismissing Green as a knee-jerk liberal is a mistake.
Perhaps Green is merely seeking to disguise himself - and doing a good job of it. Perhaps he's making nice about Giuliani in a cynical attempt to advance his own ambition. But perhaps we should take him at his word.
And when, after a long conversation, Green says, "Look, the fact is that Rudy has done a phenomenal number of good things that many people, me included, never thought possible, things someone like me can use as guidance," then it's time to at least consider the possibility that we might be listening to a credible successor to the one of the city's all-time most successful mayors.
Original Publication Date: 01/23/2000
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Robert Lederman is an artist, a regular columnist for both the Grenwich Village Gazette [See: http://www.gvny.com/ ] and Street News, and is the author of hundreds of published essays concerning Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. His essays and letters have appeared in the NY Times, NY Post, Daily News, Newsday, Brooklyn Bridge, Park Slope Courier, The Daily Challenge, Amsterdam News, Sandbox, Penthouse, Our Town, NY Press and are available on hundreds of websites around the world. Lederman has been falsely arrested 40 times to date for his anti-Giuliani activities and has never been convicted of any of the charges. He is best known for creating hundreds of paintings of Mayor Giuliani as a Hitler like dictator.
Robert Lederman, President of A.R.T.I.S.T. (Artists' Response To Illegal State Tactics) ARTISTpres at aol.com (718) 743-3722 http://www.openair.org/alerts/artist/nyc.html