Giuliani’s Crimes Caused Diallo’s Tragedy
by Robert Lederman <ARTISTpres@aol.com>, 2/25/2000
Viewed in the most favorable light possible the shooting of Amadou Diallo was both a predictable disaster waiting to happen and a classic example of botched police work. Now that the four police officers have been acquitted it’s time for the real culprit to be brought to justice-Rudy Giuliani.
Since the shooting the Mayor has made every effort to avoid taking any blame or personal responsibility for Diallo’s death. He’s purposely mischaracterized thousands of protesters, among them elected officials, police officers and clergy as police bashers when in fact it was the Mayor and his policies that were the primary target of their criticism. Among the so-called police bashers who have attacked the Mayor’s policies are his own former Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, the former head of the Patrolman’s Benevolent Association James Savage, former Mayors David Dinkins and Ed Koch, Elliot Spitzer the NY State Attorney General and the former commanding officer of the Street Crimes Unit itself. Giuliani, who consistently refuses to give the NYPD the salaries and training a modern police force needs and then pressures them to fulfill illegal arrest quotas, wants us to believe he’s defending the police officers’ actions when it is his own racist policies that are actually under attack.
In his statement immediately following the acquittal verdict he referred to the "nightmare" the four officers have been put through and how difficult it would be for them to heal, alleging that it was the protesters who caused their ordeal. If these four officers have something to heal it’s their own consciences. Based on their sworn testimony during the trial they shot a completely innocent young man to death at point blank range while he was trying to show them his ID.
At his post-verdict press conference the Mayor piously talked of his "profound respect" for the jury system and quoted Thomas Jefferson on jury trials. This is the same Mayor who has had hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers arrested on the pettiest non-criminal charges, ordered them held in custody under disgustingly inhumane conditions for days before seeing a judge when the issuance of a traffic summons or a desk appearance ticket would be the action indicated by law and then denied virtually 100% of them the right to a trial by jury. What would Jefferson think of the Mayor’s consistent record of deliberately violating freedom of speech, freedom of association and freedom from unjustified searches and seizures or of the Mayor’s established record of losing virtually every civil rights lawsuit brought against him in the past six years?
Giuliani says we must now move this issue out of the realm of politics, yet the same Giuliani policies that led to this tragedy are the highlight of his Senate campaign, of every fundraising letter and speech and are the foundation of his totally undeserved political reputation.
Just three days before the verdict the Mayor addressed more than 1,000 newly inducted police officers at their graduation ceremony calling them, "social workers" while calling critics of the NYPD, "bigots who engage in sick, irrational, hateful thinking." This is from the same Mayor who celebrated Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday by dining and then posing for photos with Jorg Haider, a notorious neo-Nazi. This is the same Mayor who endorses for President his pal G.W. Bush, a candidate who proudly speaks before anti-Catholic racist organizations and universities and whose family were major financial backers of Adolf Hitler; a family whose bank assets had to be seized by the Federal government in 1942 to prevent them from continuing to fund Hitler while Germany and the U.S. were at war.
Many people including those who are sincere and well-meaning have attempted to defend Mayor Giuliani against charges of racism. Giuliani’s politically correct style of racism doesn’t involve hooded white sheets or overt claims of minorities being inferior "mud people". His is a refined and polished racism made palatable for educated white voters by "scholarly" works like the Bell Curve and the Broken Windows ideology. This ludicrous social control theory is promoted by the Manhattan Institute, a Eugenics-inspired CIA-funded think tank which the Mayor proudly claims as the source of most of his policies.
While working as the number three man in the Reagan Justice Department, Giuliani helped craft the war on drugs, a failed racially-motivated social policy that has led to the long-term imprisonment of millions of Black and Latino males for non-violent victimless crimes and has helped make the prison-industrial complex this nations number one growth industry.
Despite the denials there are countless indications of this man’s real feelings on race. They include the racist police riot Giuliani led against former Mayor David Dinkins on the steps of City Hall, his bizarre refusal for almost six years as Mayor to meet with any of the City’s black elected officials, his attacks on programs for minority students at CUNY and his relentless persecution of the homeless and of immigrant street vendors and cabbies.
Giuliani and the race issue are inseparable. His election as NYC Mayor was directly attributable to race, in particular to the reaction by many New Yorkers to former Mayor Dinkins’ mishandling of the Crown Heights riots in which a Black mob angrily attacked Jews after a young Black child was killed in a traffic accident. Without Crown Heights and the commonly held perception among middle class white voters that African American squeegee guys, panhandlers and the homeless were a major crime problem, Giuliani would never have been elected Mayor.
His so-called quality of life campaign has been a relentless war on the civil rights of minorities and of the poor who are often arrested for the exact same behaviors that are tolerated among their middle class white counterparts. What white male has been arrested in NYC during the past six years for doing nothing more than standing in front of his own apartment building? What percentage of the City’s white males have been illegally stopped and frisked by the police? Do white males have to routinely explain to the police where they are going, what they are doing on the street or why they are visiting a neighbor or friends’ home? How many white people have been arrested while drinking a beer after work on the front steps of their building? How many unarmed white males have been shot or beaten by police who were attempting to fulfill Giuliani-ordered quality of life arrest quotas? The answer to all of the above questions is none.
The statistical charts and graphs Mayor Giuliani displays at his press conferences are the graphic depiction of his racism. Ending welfare, the welfare to work program, workfare and hundreds of thousands of community service sentences for quality of life offenders (90% whom are black) are all coded policies and programs that target people of color in this City and that are the jewel in the crown of Giuliani’s supposed "accomplishments".
Amadou Diallo’s death is only one example of the collateral damage of Mayor Giuliani’s racially motivated social policies. When the Federal investigation that Giuliani hopes won’t happen gets underway, it will be Giuliani rather than the four police officers who shot Diallo that will finally become the focus. That is when real justice, real peace and real healing can begin.
Robert Lederman is an artist, a regular columnist for the Greenwich Village Gazette [See: http://www.gvny.com/ ] The Shadow 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 41 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.
For information contact:
Robert Lederman, President of A.R.T.I.S.T. (Artists' Response To Illegal State Tactics), Ph: 718-743-3722
Email: ARTISTpres@aol.com
Website: http://www.openair.org/alerts/artist/nyc.html