August 25, 2008
By Tom Weiss
Tomweissforuscongress@gmail.com
www.groups.yahoo.com/group/tomweissforuscongress
http://www.tomsupfrontnews.blogspot.com/
When, after the August 24 service at the First Central Baptist Church in Staten Island, I told FCBC Rev. Demetrius Carolina that I am planning to run for the U.S. Congress as a Democratic write-in candidate in the 13th congressional district, he smiled, shook my hand and said, "I love it." While I am not taking his very positive reaction as an endorsement of what will be an uphill race against the very politically entrenched City Councilman Michael McMahon, as well as Republican and Independence Party candidates, I am very glad to receive the encouragement of perhaps Staten Island's most outspoken civil rights leader.
And if he ends up as a citizen supporting my candidacy it will not necessarily be because I am a member of his very community and human rights-conscious church; it will be because he sees me as the most human rights-oriented candidate for the U.S. Congess in the 13th congressional district, which includes all of Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn.
The incumbent congressman, Republican Vito Fossella, is going into political retirement as a direct result of his getting arrested last May while driving drunk on the way to his lover's house in Virginia. In Fossella's case the irony and hypocrisy involved are more apparent than in the case of let's say the even less monogamous Bill Clinton, Fossella having often pontificated about "family values" and other "conservative" virtues.
Within a few political moments of Fossella's downfall (as rapid as those previously of Elliot Spitzer and subsequently John Edwards) Councilman McMahon, who had been openly planning to run for the Borough Presidency of Staten Island, announced his candidacy for congress.
That announcement was soon followed up by expressions of support from various figures in the big money Democratic political establishment such as Senators Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton as well as some union endorsements. In a move the surprised absolutely no one, State Senator Diane Savino, an important cog in the almost lily-white Democratic Party machine that runs the North Shore of Staten Island Carmine de Sapio-style, a politician who employs a seriously anger management-challenged hack named Robert Cataldo as her Chief of Staff, has endorsed McMahon.
As a steadily increasing number of Staten Islanders, who do not depend for their news on the establishment-protecting multi-billionaire (Donald Newhouse)-owned Staten Island Advance, perhaps New York's most politically "controlled" paper, are aware, Councilman McMahon has engaged in at least one very serious act of politically motivated negligence.
It is the job of an elected official to represent all his or her clients, regardless of political views. Mr. McMahon, however, operates by a different standard, and in fact in December, 2006, refused to assist me on a number of very serious problems involving abuses against me by several government agencies. Indeed, my attorney at the time, Jacob J. Goodman, who has since passed away, who provided some legal advice and assistance on these matters, urged me to obtain assistance from my elected officials. Mr. Goodman obviously did not understand the corrupt political machine in power in Staten Island, ruled colony-style by politicians from Manhattan (City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Mayor Michael Bloomberg) and Westchester (Hillary Clinton).
The details of the games played by Diane Savino and State Assemblyman Matthew Titone (who may be the worst state legislator in what has been correctly labeled "the worst state legislature in the country") are described in UP FRONT News. You will not find a syllable in the very politically censored Advance (known to many as the Staten Island Retreat).
Indeed when I ran as a Democratic write-in candidate for the U.S. Senate against Hillary Clinton, the Advance suppressed that story for months. My name finally got into the paper after the seriously paranoid and CIA-linked NYC Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum - with whom via a family member of mine, I've been personally acquainted since 1979 - claimed during a televised campaign debate that I was "stalking" her. My rebuttal to Gotbaum's totally false defamation (for which she later very privately apologized) first appeared in NYC Newsday on August 26, 2005, in an article which also reported my candidacy for the U.S. Senate against Mrs. Clinton. Generally accurate stories appeared in the Daily News and The New York Times on August 27.
Tom Wrobleski's error-riddled slanted story on the Gotbaum vs. Weiss dispute appeared with a front page lead in the Advance on August 27. The Advance reneged on its offer to print corrections. And they refused to print my letters to thre editor which they suggested I write.
Gotbaam's "stalker" fantasy cames as a result of my being present as a reporter at various public events as which Gotbaum spoke. And as far as "stalking" Betsy Gotbaum is concerned, my punch line is always the same, i.e. a reference to a country song recorded by Dwight Yoakum titled "I Ain't That Lonely Yet."
And is was only after I wrote an article on my U.S. Senate campaign blog at http://www.tomweissdemocratforussenate.blogspot.com/ accusing the Advance of censorship and inaccurate reporting that Mr. Wrobleski was induced to interview me again and write an article about my U.S. Senate candidacy that appeared on the front page on August 21, 2006.
Councilman McMahon, after verbally promising to assist me with my serious problems in- volving several government agencies, changed his mind after he read an UP FRONT News article criticizing his political boss Quinn (aka the Marie Antoinette of NYC politics), for her refusal to respond to my polite face-to-face and e-mailed urgings that she sponsor a City Council resolution citing the racist Chinese Communist Genocide in Tibet and calling for the removal of the 2008 Olympic Games from Beijing. (City Councilman Tony Avella, a Democrat from Queens, and a candidate for mayor, did, at my behest, introduce a resolution - #1299 - along those lines which died thanks in part to lack of support from the powerful and autocratic Quinn.)
McMahon, in an angry December, 2006 e-mail to me, expressed his resentment that I had criticized Quinn and then showed his further ignorance of his responsibilities as a City Coun-cilman by declaring that for the City Council to express views on "international issues" was a "waste of time." Perhaps that would explain why the Council in 2001 unanimously passed (with Quinn ripping off the credit from another Councilmember) resolution #802 (my idea)which denounced Communist China for its atrocities in Tibet. That resolution, however, had minimal impact because it made no mention of the Olympic Games issue, the big money issue.
Perhaps Councilman McMahon would like to explain, if it is a "waste of time" for the Council to address "international issues", why he voted some years ago in favor of a pro-Iraq War resolution.
Mike McMahon, who will go around claiming to be a labor advocate, might be experiencing some sibling-related discomfort over his lobbyist brother Tom McMahon's services to the Arker Domain Corporation, accused of Walmart-style anti-labor practices at the publicly funded construction project at Markham Gardens.
Under any circumstances, I know I have a stronger union background than certainly any candidate for congress in the 13th CD, having been an elected shop steward in Local 1199, District Council 37, and District Council 1707 during the years when I was a social worker.
Michael McMahon is, in a manner of speaking, being challenged for the Democratic nomination by "peace candidate" Steve Harrison, a lawyer from Brooklyn. Harrison ran against Fossella in 2006 and, in a solidly Democratic year, lost decisively to the Republican.
Mr. Harrison, who has shown hesitating interest in my very serious issues with McMahon even to the point of agreeing to hold a press conference on the matter but not being able to commit to a date, is approaching the primary race much in the way that John Kerry took on George Bush, weakly. Harrison's campaign organization is heavily influenced by some ultra-left types like the occasionally threatening David Jones of the marginal Peace Action of Staten Island, which features self-described "anarchist" Mike May, a guy with links to a full-fledged Lyndon LaRouche-oriented neo-fascist and criminal Geoffrey Blank. All indications are that Steve Harrison, who thinks that talking and talking about Iraq will beat Mike McMahon, will be decisively defeated in the Democratic primary.
There is no way I will vote for Mike McMahon - and not too long after he opened a campaign office very near my home in Stapleton on August 24 I politely told Mr. McMahon so personally. At the very least, Mike McMahon owes me a written apology for his December, 2006 refusal to assist me and a promise that he will assist me from now on, at least in his capacity as my City Councilman.
As I left church on Sunday on my way to McMahon's Stapleton office (and then to man- hattan), FCBC churchmember Marilyn Averett, as she is recurrently in the habit of doing, pulled me aside and sort of admonished me to behave with McMahon, as she was heading in the same direction. I told her that McMahon is the one who has disrespected me and I gave her a carefully graphic description of one such instance.
Ms. Averett is a member of Staten Island Community Board 1 (as is the sometimes hot-headed First Central Baptist Church member Larry Beslow), and is thereby the beneficiary of a political gift bestowed by Councilman McMahon - and, only a little less directly, by Michael Bloomberg, who controls the CB's in the name of the big real estate developers and gentrifiers who want to convert "downtown" Staten Island, including working class Stapleton, into another Soho.
When I told Ms. Averett of my intention to run against McMahon, in part because of his arrogance in speaking and voting against a City Council bill that would have changed the name of a few blocks of a Brooklyn Street to honor the late and controversial black nationalist Sonny Abubadika Carson, she replied with a saying about "staying close to one's friends but closer to one's enemies." That seemed to be her rationalization for perhaps voting for McMahon (although I doubt he would appreciate the "enemy" reference). The logical electoral extension to that interpretation of the "closer to one's enemies" saying, would suggest that a Jew in the 1930's could cast a ballot for Hitler or that a Tibetan would vote for Mao Zedong or that an African-American would vote for Strom Thurmond.
In any event, it is clear to me that none of the candidates for congress in the 13th congressional district is ready to make his priority human rights and integrity in office. My platform, which will be released soon, will make that clear.
Vote for me.
* * * * * * *
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
MICHAEL McMAHON VS. SONNY CARSON - AND ME.
MICHAEL McMAHON VS. SONNY CARSON - AND ME. A POLITICAL CHAMELEON SHUFFLES THE RACE CARDS IN THE NEW YORK CITY COUNCIL. IT'S A CONGRESSIONAL CAMPAIGN ISSUE.
August 14, 2008
http://www.tomsupfrontnews.blogspot.com/
Tomweissforuscongress@gmail.com
www.groups.yahoo.com/group/tomweissforuscongress
By Tom Weiss
While self-determination is a concept generally applied to international relations, it is just as relevant in connection with relations between local communities with each other and with our governments. Self-determination was the issue before the New York City Council in late May, 2007.
On May 30, 2007 as I was standing on Broadway by City Hall waiting to attend what proved to be an explosive City Council meeting on the Sonny Abubadika Carson street name change controversy, I ran into Councilman Tony Avella (D.-Queens) on his way to the meeting.
What follows is something of a digression but it is relevant to the Sonny Carson story. I am quite well politically acquainted with Mr. Avella, who may be the most independent-minded member of the Council, a body that is autocratically run Marie Antoinette-style ("Let them eat granola") by Council Speaker Christine Quinn (D.-Manh.) It was Mr. Avella who, after Quinn refused my urgings that she sponsor a City Council resolution citing the Chinese Communist Genocide in Tibet and calling for the removal of the 2008 Olympic Games from Beijing, agreed to meet with me, and later also with a group of Tibetan-Americans. After those meetings he introduced NYC Council Resolution #1299 (which cited Tibet and demanded the removal of the Games from China). The bill died in large part because it was suffocated by the silence of, among others, Christine Quinn. Quinn you see is essentially a major cog in the machine of Hillary Clinton, one of many politicians who put profit (e.g. in China and in New York) ahead of human rights.
Hillary and Bill Clinton are personally among those directly involved in the cover-up of the Genocide in Tibet. Much of the maistream media (which certainly includes the multi-billionaire Donald Newhouse-owned Staten Island Advance, the establishment paper in my home borough) is also involved in that coverup. Shades of the political and media (e.g. New York Times) coverup in the 1930's as Hitler's Holocaust against the Jews picked up much steam - even before the gas!
End of digression. I asked Mr. Avella if I could have a few minutes of his time and, unlike a host of other politicians with lots to hide, he said, "Sure." After Mr. Avella assured me that he was still a candidate for mayor (a political fact obscured by the machine-"controlled" Staten Island Advance and by much of the mainstream and "alternative" media but reported in some depth in UP FRONT News) I asked him about the upcoming Council vote on the Sonny Carson street name change issue.
The Council had before it a bill to change the name of a few blocks of Gates Avenue in Brooklyn to Sonny Abubadika Avenue. Sonny Carson, who died on December 20, 2002, grew from a young life in gangs and in prison into a very well-known and a rather uncompromising black nationalist who had been active for years in fighting police brutality, retail store discrimination, and the drug trade. He had played a major role in the establishment of Medgar Evers College.
As it turned out, some words Sonny Carson said years ago in what may be described as righteous anger became a political battle ground in the City Council. And as far as I am concerned, my City Councilman , Michael McMahon (D.-S.I.), voted wrong on this issue - as he does on many issues, not to speak of his unwillingness to do his job as representing all his constituents.
Carson was presumably not a popular man in the Jewish community, in part because of tensions between African-American tenants and Jewish landlords. (Indeed, for many years, I had one of the greediest, most violent, worst landlords ever, the very Orthodox Thomas Berger of Forest Hills, a politically connected - Ed Koch - real estate speculator, who cashed in on some Tribeca lofts, including the one I lived in from 1977 until 1993. This is a guy who, aside from using violence against me, kept me without heat and water for 5 1/2 years as he tried to force me out of my home on the top floor of 190-A Duane Street in Tribeca. One of his lawyers, perhaps anticipating the Michael Douglas-depicted "greed is good" character in "The Firm", at a Loft Board hearing on my case, actually said out loud, "What's wrong with greed?" Berger finally succeeded in displacing me with the major help of a corrupt "liberal" Democratic judge named Marilyn Shafer, who had me evicted for allowing someone to play a flute at a poetry reading at my home. Thomas Berger, very much a public figure in the Orthodox Jewish community, has gone to his synagogue on 108th Street in Forest Hills "religiously" for years while treating The Ten Commandments like trash, at least during business hours.) Carson was reportedly once asked if he was anti-Semitic. Perhaps tacitly acknowledging Semitic roots, Carson said he wasn't anti-Semitic and characterized himself as "anti-white."
On principle I am opposed to generalizations of this sort. At the same time, it might be quite understandable for a Jewish person (e.g. myself, part of whose family died in the Holocaust) to express dislike for Germans and Austrians. (Hitler was very, very popular in the Vienna from which my parents escaped in the nick of time, no thanks to French collaborators with the Nazis.) I've heard Tibetans express strong "anti-Chinese" sentiments. And, while I have nothing against Chinese people, I can very well empathize with the feelings and views often expressed by Tibetans. I am quite certain that many supporters of the Irish martyr Bobby Sands had "anti-English" feelings, perhaps similar to the anti-English views of Americans like George Washington, Paul Revere, Patrick Henry, and Tom Paine, et. al. When Quinn decided that she was not merely the Speaker but also the Queen of the New York City Council and pulled Carson's name out of the street name change list, several Councilmembers rebelled. The most vocal was Charles Barron, a black nationist and former Black Panther, who has done very important work in getting the drug traffickers out of East New York and in fighting police excess. He was a friend of Sonny Carson. (I've been acquainted with Mr. Barron for many years, having been introduced by Rev. Timothy P. Mitchell of the Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church in Flushing, Queens, of which I am a member. Rev. Mitchell is in his 70's and retired. He is something of a legend in civil rights, since he worked closely with Rev.Martin Luther King for decades.)
The Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, including the Community Board, rather overwhelm-ingly had expressed its support for the Carson street name change. That is very understandable in a largely African-American community that has a street such as Gates Avenue named for a slaveowner.
When the name change documents, along with a number of similar changes for other streets for other communities, came to the Council, which must approve all such changes, Speaker Quinn pulled out the Carson change, declaring that Carson was "divisive" and that there would be no streets named after Sonny Carson.
Back to Tony Avella. As he has heading towards the entrance gate to City Hall, I asked him if I could talk with him briefly. Unlike a bunch of politicians with something to hide - Christine Quinn and NYC Public Advocate Betsy ("CIA") Gotbaum being two cases in point - Councilman Avella said, "Sure."
We talked a little about Tibet, tenants rights and his candidacy for mayor. I then askedhim how he planned to vote on the Carson street name change bill. He said he had not decided. I asked him if I could give him my view and he said, "Sure." I told him that, while I was not about to vouch for Sonny Carson's diplomatic gifts, I felt that the main issue was self-determination and that the Bedford-Stuyvesant community had a right to honor its own heroes. I also suggested that he discuss the issue with Councilman Barron, hopefully before the vote. He then went inside. I later entered and sat in the balcony packed with Carson supporters.
Not too long after City Councilmembers wandered into the ornate City Council chambers, Mr. Avella went over to Mr. Barron and they chatted together for several minutes, as I observed from the balcony.
The debate was long and very intense. Sitting in positions of monarch-style authority were Gotbaum and Quinn and there were repeated admonitions to the balcony to be quiet.Charles Barron most certainly did not keep quiet, stating openly his admiration for Sonny Carson and his education-related (helping to start Medgar Evers College) and anti-drug ac-complishments. Barron was eloquently supported by Councilman Al Vann, in whose district the affected street blocks are located and who introduced the bill to restore Carson's name to the list for Council approval. A number of African-American legislators kept silent and ended up voting against the Carson bill, which lost by an atypically close vote. (Under the autocratic Quinn the Council tends to vote monolithically, often with dissenting votes from Avella and/or Barron.) The only two non-African-American Councilmembers who voted in favor of Mr. Vann's bill were Tony Avella and Rosie Mendez. Avella has long made it clear to me that he is not afraid to stand up to Quinn (whom he regards as a "prima donna") on any issue, most certainly including opposition to the Beijing Olympics and opposition to over-development and gentrification. Rosie Mendez (D.-Manh.) is to be congratulated for signs of independence from Christine Quinn.
Several non-African-American Councimembers also spoke against the bill. Councilman Oliver Koppell made known his opposition in a brief speech. In the days preceding the vote Mayor Bloomberg expressed the view, reported in the Daily News on May 29, 2007, that the proposal to name a street after Sonny Carson was "probably the worst idea the City Council, anybody in the City Council, has had in recent memory." The Mayor also said, "I think there's probably nobody whose name I could come up with who less should have a street named after him in this city than Sonny Carson." Hmm! I personally have never been partial to naming streets, etc., after slaveowners, who included a number of our presidents. And so I have serious reservations about the mayor's value system. My City Councilman, Mike McMahon, is much better known for putting his name on almost every garbage can in his North Shore Staten Island district (parts of which are nonetheless litter-ridden) than he is for his open-mindedness, his oratory, and any shred of integrity he may possess. He is also known to take personally any meaningful criticism of his immediate political boss, Christine Quinn, the Marie Antoinette New York City. Indeed, in an angry December, 2006 e-mail to me in which McMahon refused my request for his assistance on some very serious constituent matters, he cited his resentment over my earlier UP FRONT News criticism of Quinn.) I do not recall McMahon's exact words on the Carson bill although they hardly showed any respect whatsoever for Sonny Carson's accomplishments. The Irish-American McMahon, a Democratic Party machine politician from Staten Island, declares that he has the right to decide whom a black neighborhood in Brooklyn has the right to honor. I hope he doesn't start to pontificate about the self-determination rights of Georgians and other oppressed peoples. I wonder how McMahon might respond to very theoretical African-American and Anglo-Saxon opposition to naming a street in an Irish neighborhood after Bobby Sands. I've met the macho McMahon on a number of occasions. Like his Republicrat role models, Bloomberg, Quinn and Hillary Clinton, Mike McMahon is a political chameleon who puts on his more civil and civil rights persona when in front of African-American audiences or dealing with people like my pastor, the very influential Rev. Demetrius Carolina of the First Central Baptist Church in Stapleton. Indeed at a recent meeting at the church, Rev. Carolina - without visible enthusiasm - announced that "the next congressman" (when I asked to whom he was referring, he said "McMahon") would be visiting the church. Terrific! Rev. Carolina, whom I regard as an eloquent civil rights leader, knows there is no way that I will vote for Mike McMahon and that I hope no member of his church votes for a guy who, aside from his refusal to assist this churchmember, seems to think he is a better judge of Sonny Carson's character than Charles Barron and thousands of other African-Americans. To me Mike McMahon represents the worst kind of political and indeed ethnic arrogance. All this should be an important campaign issue for Steve Harrison, a progressive anti-Iraq War Democrat challenging McMahon for the Democratic nomination for Congress in the 13th C.D., which covers all of Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn. This district has become world famous as our Republican Congressman Vito Fossella, following the footsteps of such macho role models and Bill Clinton and Elliot Spitzer (but probably not however anticipating the fall of John Edwards), got arrested last May for DUI as he was automobile-careening his way to his lover's house in Virginia, as his (blissfully?) unaware wife and kids were at home in Staten Island. Within a few political moments of Fossella's fall from whatever "grace" he may have had, Mike McMahon, who had been after the Borough Presidency of Staten Island, announced his candidacy for congress. And, within a few political moments after that, the Clinton/Quinn-run Democratic machine that runs the North Shore of Staten Island like a colony lined up for McMahon as did some labor unions and political clubs. The Staten Island Advance, quite clearly New York's most politically censored newspaper, has pretty much endorsed its poster boy McMahon by editorializing that the next congressman should be from the Staten Island part of the district. Harrison lives in Brooklyn. I've discussed all this very directly with Steve Harrison. If he is ready to fully take on Mike McMahon and challenge him on his negligences vis as vis me, his cavalier attitudes about human rights (e.g. the Tibetans) and his shuffling of the race cards in the Council on the Sonny Carson issue, I'll support Harrison. If, however, Mr. Harrison wants to emulate John Kerry, who wimped out repeatedly in his run against George W. Bush in 2004, he will lose like Kerry, only probably by a significantly greater margin In that case Mike McMahon will also be up against me as a Democratic write- in candidate for the U.S. Congress.
* * * * * * *
August 14, 2008
http://www.tomsupfrontnews.blogspot.com/
Tomweissforuscongress@gmail.com
www.groups.yahoo.com/group/tomweissforuscongress
By Tom Weiss
While self-determination is a concept generally applied to international relations, it is just as relevant in connection with relations between local communities with each other and with our governments. Self-determination was the issue before the New York City Council in late May, 2007.
On May 30, 2007 as I was standing on Broadway by City Hall waiting to attend what proved to be an explosive City Council meeting on the Sonny Abubadika Carson street name change controversy, I ran into Councilman Tony Avella (D.-Queens) on his way to the meeting.
What follows is something of a digression but it is relevant to the Sonny Carson story. I am quite well politically acquainted with Mr. Avella, who may be the most independent-minded member of the Council, a body that is autocratically run Marie Antoinette-style ("Let them eat granola") by Council Speaker Christine Quinn (D.-Manh.) It was Mr. Avella who, after Quinn refused my urgings that she sponsor a City Council resolution citing the Chinese Communist Genocide in Tibet and calling for the removal of the 2008 Olympic Games from Beijing, agreed to meet with me, and later also with a group of Tibetan-Americans. After those meetings he introduced NYC Council Resolution #1299 (which cited Tibet and demanded the removal of the Games from China). The bill died in large part because it was suffocated by the silence of, among others, Christine Quinn. Quinn you see is essentially a major cog in the machine of Hillary Clinton, one of many politicians who put profit (e.g. in China and in New York) ahead of human rights.
Hillary and Bill Clinton are personally among those directly involved in the cover-up of the Genocide in Tibet. Much of the maistream media (which certainly includes the multi-billionaire Donald Newhouse-owned Staten Island Advance, the establishment paper in my home borough) is also involved in that coverup. Shades of the political and media (e.g. New York Times) coverup in the 1930's as Hitler's Holocaust against the Jews picked up much steam - even before the gas!
End of digression. I asked Mr. Avella if I could have a few minutes of his time and, unlike a host of other politicians with lots to hide, he said, "Sure." After Mr. Avella assured me that he was still a candidate for mayor (a political fact obscured by the machine-"controlled" Staten Island Advance and by much of the mainstream and "alternative" media but reported in some depth in UP FRONT News) I asked him about the upcoming Council vote on the Sonny Carson street name change issue.
The Council had before it a bill to change the name of a few blocks of Gates Avenue in Brooklyn to Sonny Abubadika Avenue. Sonny Carson, who died on December 20, 2002, grew from a young life in gangs and in prison into a very well-known and a rather uncompromising black nationalist who had been active for years in fighting police brutality, retail store discrimination, and the drug trade. He had played a major role in the establishment of Medgar Evers College.
As it turned out, some words Sonny Carson said years ago in what may be described as righteous anger became a political battle ground in the City Council. And as far as I am concerned, my City Councilman , Michael McMahon (D.-S.I.), voted wrong on this issue - as he does on many issues, not to speak of his unwillingness to do his job as representing all his constituents.
Carson was presumably not a popular man in the Jewish community, in part because of tensions between African-American tenants and Jewish landlords. (Indeed, for many years, I had one of the greediest, most violent, worst landlords ever, the very Orthodox Thomas Berger of Forest Hills, a politically connected - Ed Koch - real estate speculator, who cashed in on some Tribeca lofts, including the one I lived in from 1977 until 1993. This is a guy who, aside from using violence against me, kept me without heat and water for 5 1/2 years as he tried to force me out of my home on the top floor of 190-A Duane Street in Tribeca. One of his lawyers, perhaps anticipating the Michael Douglas-depicted "greed is good" character in "The Firm", at a Loft Board hearing on my case, actually said out loud, "What's wrong with greed?" Berger finally succeeded in displacing me with the major help of a corrupt "liberal" Democratic judge named Marilyn Shafer, who had me evicted for allowing someone to play a flute at a poetry reading at my home. Thomas Berger, very much a public figure in the Orthodox Jewish community, has gone to his synagogue on 108th Street in Forest Hills "religiously" for years while treating The Ten Commandments like trash, at least during business hours.) Carson was reportedly once asked if he was anti-Semitic. Perhaps tacitly acknowledging Semitic roots, Carson said he wasn't anti-Semitic and characterized himself as "anti-white."
On principle I am opposed to generalizations of this sort. At the same time, it might be quite understandable for a Jewish person (e.g. myself, part of whose family died in the Holocaust) to express dislike for Germans and Austrians. (Hitler was very, very popular in the Vienna from which my parents escaped in the nick of time, no thanks to French collaborators with the Nazis.) I've heard Tibetans express strong "anti-Chinese" sentiments. And, while I have nothing against Chinese people, I can very well empathize with the feelings and views often expressed by Tibetans. I am quite certain that many supporters of the Irish martyr Bobby Sands had "anti-English" feelings, perhaps similar to the anti-English views of Americans like George Washington, Paul Revere, Patrick Henry, and Tom Paine, et. al. When Quinn decided that she was not merely the Speaker but also the Queen of the New York City Council and pulled Carson's name out of the street name change list, several Councilmembers rebelled. The most vocal was Charles Barron, a black nationist and former Black Panther, who has done very important work in getting the drug traffickers out of East New York and in fighting police excess. He was a friend of Sonny Carson. (I've been acquainted with Mr. Barron for many years, having been introduced by Rev. Timothy P. Mitchell of the Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church in Flushing, Queens, of which I am a member. Rev. Mitchell is in his 70's and retired. He is something of a legend in civil rights, since he worked closely with Rev.Martin Luther King for decades.)
The Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, including the Community Board, rather overwhelm-ingly had expressed its support for the Carson street name change. That is very understandable in a largely African-American community that has a street such as Gates Avenue named for a slaveowner.
When the name change documents, along with a number of similar changes for other streets for other communities, came to the Council, which must approve all such changes, Speaker Quinn pulled out the Carson change, declaring that Carson was "divisive" and that there would be no streets named after Sonny Carson.
Back to Tony Avella. As he has heading towards the entrance gate to City Hall, I asked him if I could talk with him briefly. Unlike a bunch of politicians with something to hide - Christine Quinn and NYC Public Advocate Betsy ("CIA") Gotbaum being two cases in point - Councilman Avella said, "Sure."
We talked a little about Tibet, tenants rights and his candidacy for mayor. I then askedhim how he planned to vote on the Carson street name change bill. He said he had not decided. I asked him if I could give him my view and he said, "Sure." I told him that, while I was not about to vouch for Sonny Carson's diplomatic gifts, I felt that the main issue was self-determination and that the Bedford-Stuyvesant community had a right to honor its own heroes. I also suggested that he discuss the issue with Councilman Barron, hopefully before the vote. He then went inside. I later entered and sat in the balcony packed with Carson supporters.
Not too long after City Councilmembers wandered into the ornate City Council chambers, Mr. Avella went over to Mr. Barron and they chatted together for several minutes, as I observed from the balcony.
The debate was long and very intense. Sitting in positions of monarch-style authority were Gotbaum and Quinn and there were repeated admonitions to the balcony to be quiet.Charles Barron most certainly did not keep quiet, stating openly his admiration for Sonny Carson and his education-related (helping to start Medgar Evers College) and anti-drug ac-complishments. Barron was eloquently supported by Councilman Al Vann, in whose district the affected street blocks are located and who introduced the bill to restore Carson's name to the list for Council approval. A number of African-American legislators kept silent and ended up voting against the Carson bill, which lost by an atypically close vote. (Under the autocratic Quinn the Council tends to vote monolithically, often with dissenting votes from Avella and/or Barron.) The only two non-African-American Councilmembers who voted in favor of Mr. Vann's bill were Tony Avella and Rosie Mendez. Avella has long made it clear to me that he is not afraid to stand up to Quinn (whom he regards as a "prima donna") on any issue, most certainly including opposition to the Beijing Olympics and opposition to over-development and gentrification. Rosie Mendez (D.-Manh.) is to be congratulated for signs of independence from Christine Quinn.
Several non-African-American Councimembers also spoke against the bill. Councilman Oliver Koppell made known his opposition in a brief speech. In the days preceding the vote Mayor Bloomberg expressed the view, reported in the Daily News on May 29, 2007, that the proposal to name a street after Sonny Carson was "probably the worst idea the City Council, anybody in the City Council, has had in recent memory." The Mayor also said, "I think there's probably nobody whose name I could come up with who less should have a street named after him in this city than Sonny Carson." Hmm! I personally have never been partial to naming streets, etc., after slaveowners, who included a number of our presidents. And so I have serious reservations about the mayor's value system. My City Councilman, Mike McMahon, is much better known for putting his name on almost every garbage can in his North Shore Staten Island district (parts of which are nonetheless litter-ridden) than he is for his open-mindedness, his oratory, and any shred of integrity he may possess. He is also known to take personally any meaningful criticism of his immediate political boss, Christine Quinn, the Marie Antoinette New York City. Indeed, in an angry December, 2006 e-mail to me in which McMahon refused my request for his assistance on some very serious constituent matters, he cited his resentment over my earlier UP FRONT News criticism of Quinn.) I do not recall McMahon's exact words on the Carson bill although they hardly showed any respect whatsoever for Sonny Carson's accomplishments. The Irish-American McMahon, a Democratic Party machine politician from Staten Island, declares that he has the right to decide whom a black neighborhood in Brooklyn has the right to honor. I hope he doesn't start to pontificate about the self-determination rights of Georgians and other oppressed peoples. I wonder how McMahon might respond to very theoretical African-American and Anglo-Saxon opposition to naming a street in an Irish neighborhood after Bobby Sands. I've met the macho McMahon on a number of occasions. Like his Republicrat role models, Bloomberg, Quinn and Hillary Clinton, Mike McMahon is a political chameleon who puts on his more civil and civil rights persona when in front of African-American audiences or dealing with people like my pastor, the very influential Rev. Demetrius Carolina of the First Central Baptist Church in Stapleton. Indeed at a recent meeting at the church, Rev. Carolina - without visible enthusiasm - announced that "the next congressman" (when I asked to whom he was referring, he said "McMahon") would be visiting the church. Terrific! Rev. Carolina, whom I regard as an eloquent civil rights leader, knows there is no way that I will vote for Mike McMahon and that I hope no member of his church votes for a guy who, aside from his refusal to assist this churchmember, seems to think he is a better judge of Sonny Carson's character than Charles Barron and thousands of other African-Americans. To me Mike McMahon represents the worst kind of political and indeed ethnic arrogance. All this should be an important campaign issue for Steve Harrison, a progressive anti-Iraq War Democrat challenging McMahon for the Democratic nomination for Congress in the 13th C.D., which covers all of Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn. This district has become world famous as our Republican Congressman Vito Fossella, following the footsteps of such macho role models and Bill Clinton and Elliot Spitzer (but probably not however anticipating the fall of John Edwards), got arrested last May for DUI as he was automobile-careening his way to his lover's house in Virginia, as his (blissfully?) unaware wife and kids were at home in Staten Island. Within a few political moments of Fossella's fall from whatever "grace" he may have had, Mike McMahon, who had been after the Borough Presidency of Staten Island, announced his candidacy for congress. And, within a few political moments after that, the Clinton/Quinn-run Democratic machine that runs the North Shore of Staten Island like a colony lined up for McMahon as did some labor unions and political clubs. The Staten Island Advance, quite clearly New York's most politically censored newspaper, has pretty much endorsed its poster boy McMahon by editorializing that the next congressman should be from the Staten Island part of the district. Harrison lives in Brooklyn. I've discussed all this very directly with Steve Harrison. If he is ready to fully take on Mike McMahon and challenge him on his negligences vis as vis me, his cavalier attitudes about human rights (e.g. the Tibetans) and his shuffling of the race cards in the Council on the Sonny Carson issue, I'll support Harrison. If, however, Mr. Harrison wants to emulate John Kerry, who wimped out repeatedly in his run against George W. Bush in 2004, he will lose like Kerry, only probably by a significantly greater margin In that case Mike McMahon will also be up against me as a Democratic write- in candidate for the U.S. Congress.
* * * * * * *
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)