Giuliani Steps On the Homeless
By Robert Lederman 11/20/99
He’s against raising the minimum wage. He wants to kick people out of the City’s repulsive homeless shelters and take away their children if they refuse to work full time in exchange for a few feet of space in which to lie down. He cuts funds to drug programs forcing addicts to live in the streets. His pandering to real estate interests decimated New York’s low income housing and Single Room Occupancy hotels where many homeless once resided. His ongoing war on vendors, an occupation which once supported many of the City’s thousands of homeless, made panhandling and sleeping on the street their final resort. Now he wants the NYPD to arrest New Yorkers simply for being homeless. Adolf Crueliani strikes again.
Anyone who thinks this is about making the streets safe from cazy people doesn’t understand Giuliani. What’s at risk is not our safety (more innocent New Yorkers are killed by the NYPD than by deranged homeless people) but the illusion that this Mayor made the streets safe. What’s at risk is the sky high commercial rents on socially sterilized all-white Madison Avenue. What’s at risk is his false image in the upcoming Senate race.
I’ve been homeless and slept on New York City streets in the depth of winter. Like many people I found a cardboard box more attractive than going to the City’s dangerous and degrading homeless shelters. I never panhandled but lived by selling my artwork for whatever I could get. When the police would confiscate my art I’d sell old clothes or books I found in the garbage alongside hundreds of other homeless men and women. In my experience, homeless people are no crazier or violent or involved in drugs than the rest of the City’s residents. Some are amazingly resourceful in the struggle for survival, eking out a living from the debris of other people’s lives. Some are among the most patient, helpful and tolerant people I’ve ever met. A few are almost as nasty and deranged as the 107th Mayor of New York.
It’s easy to look down on the homeless if you have a nice apartment and a good paying job let alone if you are a big shot with a suburban estate, a stock portfolio and a driveway full of fancy cars. For such fortunate people the homeless seem like another species. But that’s an illusion too. Many of those who live on the streets once had a good job, a family, a car, a college degree and a nice home. For many New Yorkers losing their job, getting injured, getting divorced or becoming depressed could land them on the street in a frighteningly short time.
It’s not surprising that a Mayor who doesn’t even want elected Democratic officials to hold a press conference on the steps of "his" City Hall thinks homeless people do not have a right to sit, stand or lay down on a public street. This is the same Mayor who believes families should need a permit to have a picnic in the newly corporatized Central Park. Instead of using tax dollars to provide inexpensive housing the Mayor will now waste millions falsely arresting homeless people for Disorderly Conduct and further jamming the already packed Criminal Courts. I’ve been falsely arrested almost 40 times for Disorderly Conduct and have never been convicted or paid any fine. Based on the Mayor’s understanding of this law, handing out a leaflet, making a speech or just standing on the sidewalk is sufficient grounds for arrest.
Being harassed, falsely arrested and abused by the police will not be a form of therapy for the City’s already stressed-out homeless. I wonder how many tired, desperate or justifiably enraged homeless people will be shot by the NYPD while resisting being arrested for having no place to live or because they acted "suspiciously". Police officers and their unions would do well to refuse to enforce this new policy if only to protect themselves from lawsuits.
Race is the essence of this issue. Most of the City’s homeless are African Americans and Latinos. The people that have Giuliani’s ear find such people "threatening" when they are doing nothing more than walking down the street minding their own business. Now, thousands of law abiding African American homeless men, many of whom are Viet Nam veterans, are being further demonized in order to make the Giuliani administration appear decisive. Is this what the Mayor’s ludicrous upstate campaign ads mean by his "compassion"?
Let’s talk about real lunacy. Hillary Clinton has been viciously attacked by the Mayor for not immediately objecting to Arafat’s wife’s statement in Arabic that the Israeli government sprayed toxic tear gas on Palestinians. During the months of September and October this same Mayor ordered the entire City to be needlessly and repeatedly sprayed with a poison gas, Malathion, which his own literature describes as an organophosphate nerve gas invented by the Nazis. The health and safety of 8 million New Yorkers was deliberately damaged by this act of chemical terrorism.
Want things to be safe? Let’s get the most dangerous lunatic in all of New York off the streets and make this city truly safe for civil liberties. Arrest Giuliani! Arrest Giuliani! Arrest Giuliani!
For background read "Enough, Rudy Says Vows he'll rid streets of sleeping homeless people" NY Daily News 11/20/99; "Assault Spurs Police Crackdown on Homeless" NY Post 11/20/99; "In Wake of Attack, Giuliani Cracks Down on Homeless" NY Times 11/20/99
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 activites 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