For immediate release (2/25/99)
by Robert Lederman, President of A.R.T.I.S.T. (Artists' Response To Illegal State Tactics)<ARTISTpres@aol.com>
provided through OPENAIR-MARKET NET
Last night I was arrested for criticizing Mayor Rudolph Giuliani as he stood before an adoring all-white crowd in a Sunnyside Queens Town Hall meeting. This was my 35th arrest for speaking out against the Mayor, painting his portrait as Hitler or organizing demonstrations against his policies. The Mayor was extolling his many accomplishments when I stood up and accused him of being responsible for the death of my fellow street vendor, Amadou Diallo. Another A.R.T.I.S.T. member, Knut Masco, was also arrested while silently holding up a small cardboard sign that said, "Arrest Giuliani".
As we were dragged out of the auditorium by twenty of the hundreds of cops at the event the Mayor made his standard remark in response to protesters claiming that, "They just want to get on television". This is amusing from someone who spends each day traveling with a caravan of bodyguards and press aides from one fake photo opportunity to another.
Standing in the midst of that middle class all white audience in Sunnyside Queens as they took turns slavishly praising the Mayor, I was reminded of the good people of Germany in the1930's. They also had concerns about quality of life, about minorities "taking over", about vendors, about people on welfare and about crime. Like Mayor Giuliani, Hitler was an expert at exploiting people's fears and petty grievances for his political advantage. Both men possess the ability of getting free people to not only accept the loss of their freedom but to rejoice in its demise.
What's most frightening about Giuliani is not his totalitarian vision of a strictly ordered society but that so many genuinely good people like what he's doing. One might have hoped that every middle class white New Yorker would by now feel outraged and personally threatened about cops getting hollowpoint bullets, about their cars being forfeited even if they were found not guilty, about the loss of their right to enter, let alone protest, at City Hall. But these good people of Sunnyside Queens were not outraged. If anything, they were begging the Mayor for more of the same.
The irony is that Giuliani cares no more about the white middle class people of Sunnyside Queens than he does for the black residents of Harlem. When Hitler began rounding up the Jews, euthanizing the mentally ill or confiscating the property of "undesirables" the good people of Germany were delighted. Unfortunately, when Hitler's Gestapo came for them as well it was too late to begin protesting.
As a Jew growing up in the relative safety of New York I've often wondered what would have happened if fate ordained for me to grow up in Germany during the 1920's as Hitler came to power. Would I have joined protests? Written leaflets? Held up a sign? Risked being arrested to make a point?
When Hitler passed his first set of laws in 1933, would I, like the good people of Sunnyside Queens that love Mayor Giuliani, have been grateful to him for improving my quality of life? You may think it is an exaggeration to make comparisons between Mayor Giuliani and the monster, Adolf Hitler. If so, read this excerpt from Hitler's infamous 1933 law and ask yourself if it sounds at all familiar.
"Restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression including freedom of the press; on the rights of assembly and association; warrants for house searches, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed" [from Hitler's, Decree For The Protection of the People and the State, 1933].
Before arriving in his speeding motorcade of six black cars to address the good white people of Sunnyside Queens, Mayor Giuliani was in Washington D.C. where he proudly stood beside Congressman Bob Barr for a press conference. Barr lavishly praised Giuliani as a hero of the drug wars, the controversial Federal policy that's put close to one million young black and Latino men in prison for non-violent offenses. That's the same Bob Barr who has allegedly been a featured speaker at white supremacist fundraisers.
I've learned from at least two sources that are very close to Giuliani that the "higher office" he really wants is to be the next U.S. Attorney General. One can only imagine the horrors this man will perpetrate on the American people if, instead of being the lame duck dictator of New York, he can set the legal policies for the world's most powerful nation.
Can it happen? It can if the good people of this city and of this nation let it. It can if the good white people that Giuliani needs in order to rise to higher office fail to see that, except for his skin color, Amadou Diallo could have been their own son, their brother or themselves.
If Giuliani is not a racist as he and his supporters fervently
claim, all the worse for the good white people of Sunnyside Queens
and of this nation. Once Mr. Giuliani's police state is in place
it will in time be coming for you.
Robert Lederman
President of A.R.T.I.S.T.
(Artists' Response To Illegal State Tactics)
(718) 369-2111
e mail <ARTISTpres@aol.com>
http://www.openair.org/alerts/artist/nyc.html
[Among the following excerpts from this article is a description of the Sunnyside Queens Town Hall Meeting]
New York Newsday 2/25/99
Battle in D.C. / Rep. Meeks confronts Giuliani about police brutality
By Ellen Yan. WASHINGTON BUREAU. Staff writer Mohamad Bazzi in Queens contributed to this story.
Washington - As Mayor Rudolph Giuliani was telling a congressional subcommittee yesterday about the city's success in fighting crime, he was ambushed by Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-Far Rockaway) over recent incidents of alleged police brutality.
… Meeks also questioned Giuliani's record, citing rising complaints against police and a total of $44 million spent to settle police misconduct complaints during Giuliani's first two years.
During a hastily arranged news conference following the mayor's testimony, members of the Congressional Black Caucus called on the White House and the Justice Department to probe "systemic" abuses by the New York Police Department, as well as brutality in other big-city police departments.
…Before Giuliani began his testimony, a heckler in the audience cried, "Amadou Diallo . . . a black man killed." The man was referring to the Guinean street vendor that four street-crime officers killed Feb. 4.
Last night, Giuliani appeared at a Town Hall meeting at PS 150 in Sunnyside and was heckled during his speech by two people who used the occasion to protest the shooting of Diallo. Robert Lederman, an artist who frequently shows up at Giuliani events, was collared by police and escorted out of the auditorium after he jumped up from his seat and shouted: "Arrest Giuliani. He is responsible for Diallo's death." Fifteen minutes later, an unidentified man seated in the same area held up a sign proclaiming: "Arrest Giuliani." Police took away the sign, but the man then displayed two more. Police took those away and escorted him outside.
"If you act stupid and idiotic, then the cameras will pay attention," Giuliani laughingly shouted at the sign carrier. About 300 people attended.
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