Time To Deflate "Blow Up" Giuliani
by Robert Lederman(4/28/99), President of A.R.T.I.S.T. (Artists' Response To Illegal State Tactics)<ARTISTpres@aol.com>
provided through OPENAIR-MARKET NET
Claiming he did not regret his suggestion that the entire school system should be "blown up" and that it was for, "the good of the children", Mayor Giuliani has continued to defend his most bizarre statement to date, made just two days after the Littleton, Colo. massacre and school bombing. ( See below for Giuliani Quotes on Public Education).
Giuliani, who told the press he felt, "like a prophet" while making the blowing up statement, claims he wants to abolish the Board of Education and replace it with a new agency all of whose members would be directly appointed by him. The Mayor further explained that his idea was to, "...do for [school] principals what the Police Department does with precinct commanders", a reference to the weekly COMSTAT meetings at One Police Plaza in which precinct commanders are mercilessly pressured to achieve results and are humiliated or transferred by their supervisors if they are unable to maintain a pattern of falling crime statistics. The PBA, the largest union for police officers has called the COMSTAT system and Giuliani's policies including monthly quotas for arrests and summonses, "a blueprint for a police state".
This is the same Mayor who had the police track down a college student who held a sign at One Police Plaza referring to the Mayor's son and who has spent the past few weeks publicly denouncing protest signs that referred to him as, "Adolf Giuliani" and as a dictator. He's called such signs, "hate speech" that, "must be stopped".
This is the same Mayor who has put cops and metal detectors in all public high schools (to stop violence), who has surrounded City Hall with impenetrable barricades and fences (to prevent terrorism), who insults reporters on a daily basis for asking "stupid" or "foolish" questions and who confronts non-violent protesters with helicopters, riot squads and an army of police.
Children who make threatening statements about killing students or blowing up their school are being interrogated by police, suspended and in some cases taken into custody across the country in the wake of the Colorado massacre. Should the parents of the more than one million children in NYC public schools tolerate such violent speech from our Mayor, a man who has distinguished himself as an enemy of other people's free speech? The Mayor must immediately offer the parents of all public school children, Dr. Crew and all public school teachers and students a full public apology and retraction of the statement or, refusing that, resign from office.
-- Robert Lederman, President of A.R.T.I.S.T. (Artists' Response To Illegal State Tactics)
Giuliani Quotes on Public Education
"This is an idea whose time has come," the mayor said. "The whole [school] system should be blown up, and a new one put in its place." "I feel like a prophet today," he said. -Daily News 4/23/99 "Rudy Unveils 35B Budget Plans school vouchers, tax cuts & more cops"
During his budget address on Thursday, Giuliani went so far as to suggest that the entire school system be "blown up" - a statement that disturbed Dr. Crew, who read it as a comment of his own performance, and angered Steven Sanders, the chairman of the state Assembly's education committee, who said it was "inappropriate and offensive." -NY Times 4/24/99 "Giuliani and Vallone Seek to Abolish School Board"
The Mayor, speaking to reporters at City Hall, said he did not regret his remarks last week that the school system was "dysfunctional" and "should be blown up. "It's about the good of the children, and it's only about the good of the children." "It's like his goal in life is to spear people, destroy them, to go for the jugular," [ex-Mayor] Koch said. NY Times 4/28/99 "Mayor Defends Attack on Schools and Says He Meant to Help"
In a letter sent late Monday to 600 political, civic and educational leaders in New York and Albany, Dr. Crew replied in tones of anger and dismay to the Mayor's comment last week that the school system was "dysfunctional" and should be "blown up." "When the Mayor declares that the whole school system should be blown up, he tells 1.1 million children and thousands of parents, teachers and administrators that they are wasting their time," NY Times 4/27/99 Chancellor Responds Angrily to Mayor's Plans
The Mayor and the City Council Speaker, Peter F. Vallone, who have both been critical of the seven-member school board, are pursuing legislation that would disband the board and replace it with an education commissioner and deputies, all appointed by the Mayor in conjunction with the Council. "You could do for principals what the Police Department does with precinct commanders." [Mayor Giuliliani said.] William C. Thompson Jr., the board's president, said the plan would completely politicize public education. -NY Times April 25, 1999 Giuliani Defends Proposal to Disband School Board
"Jacquelyn Kamin, chairwoman of the Chancellor's Parent Advisory Council, said Dr. Crew had articulated many of the frustrations of parents with the public school system. She said she had been shocked by the Mayor's image of blowing up the school system just days after the massacre at a high school in Littleton, Colo." -NY Times 4/27/99 Chancellor Responds Angrily to Mayor's Plans
Crew said that the mayor's comments tells ''1.1 million children and thousands of parents, teachers and administrators that they are wasting their time in schools that he has suddenly dismissed as no good and beyond redemption.'' NY Post 4/27/99 ANGRY CREW BLASTS GIULIANI FOR 'RHETORIC OF DESTRUCTION'
"It's the perfect stance for someone with his ambitions, to appear to be a reformer who promotes public education. This is pure, raw politics, and it's all about Giuliani's political future." -NY Times 4/28/99 NEWS ANALYSIS Attacking in a City, Appealing to a State
Robert Lederman, President of A.R.T.I.S.T. (Artists' Response To Illegal State Tactics), (718) 369-2111
Email: ARTISTpres@aol.com
Website: http://www.openair.org/alerts/artist/nyc.html