I knew this was going to happen. For 20 years, it was clear that he had lost access to City Hall. Former Mayor Giuliani told him directly in his first few months that he was no longer welcomed at City Hall. And former Mayor Bloomberg made a point to exclude him. When our new Mayor de Blasio's wife Chirlane McCray appointed his long time assistant at the National Action Network as her chief of staff at the cushy $170K salary, I knew he was back. If you haven't already guessed, "he" is Al Sharpton. And now Mayor de Blasio has made it clear that Al is back and has a seat at the table.
Let's take a trip to yesteryear...{{{{{wooooo...wooooooo....dissolve to...}}}} Oooh, the early '90's in New York. I remember this time! Cool! This was the time where you couldn't walk around Manhattan without fear of becoming a statistic! Cool! David Dinkins was Mayor and Al Sharpton was his best buddy! Protests, riots, general mayhem, and a peak of 2,224 murders in 1991! Good times.
It all came to a grand crescendo on August 19, 1991 in Crown Heights (Brooklyn) when a boy named Gavin Cato was accidentally struck and killed by a car driven by a Jewish man. Four days of riots ensued urged on by the Rev. Al Sharpton (and weakly discouraged by Mayor Dinkins) ending with the stabbing death of Yankel Rosenbaum, an innocent Australian rabbinical student innocently walking down a Crown Heights street.
Dinkins lost his reelection bid in 1994 to Rudy Giuliani claiming it was because of racist voters (a claim he still makes to this day, by the way). So Rudy came in as a former US District Attorney and with the help of Police Commissioner Bill Bratton and then by Ray Kelly, set about cleaning the city up. Block by block, they cleaned up the streets and crime went down.
But fearing that he had not done enough damage and probably because he thought Rudy would see the light, Rev. Al staged another protest in 1995. This time against a Jewish landlord who was trying to evict a black business owner to expand another business of Jewish tenant and owner of Freddie's Fashion Mart. Yeah, this was Rev. Al's rally cry -
Unfortunately, the protest turned violent (again), when one of the protesters entered Freddie's Fashion Mart and shot several people and then set the place on fire. Six employees died of smoke inhalation and the shooter killed himself. Al's only regret was using the term "white interloper".
Rudy didn't back down from his crusade of ridding the city of crime. He, Bratton and Kelly were so successful that the tourists started pouring in. Times Square morphed from some post-apocalyptic Mad Max movie into Disneyland. [Maybe they overshot the mark] Mayor Bloomberg continued with Ray Kelly and lowered violent crime to less than 300 murders in 2013.
{{{{woooo....wooooooo....dissolve to....}}}
Now Bill de Blasio is Mayor and Al Sharpton is his point man in all things racial. Oh, and violent crime is up 25% in just 8 months! Rev. Al is staging a protest on August 23 in Staten Island to protest the death of a long time petty criminal at the hands of the police. The good times are back.
Oh, there's still some good news! Bill Bratton is back as Police Commissioner. That's something, right?
CORRECTION: I have been spelling our new Mayor's last name incorrectly. It's "de Blasio", not "DiBlasio".
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Let's take a trip to yesteryear...{{{{{wooooo...wooooooo....dissolve to...}}}} Oooh, the early '90's in New York. I remember this time! Cool! This was the time where you couldn't walk around Manhattan without fear of becoming a statistic! Cool! David Dinkins was Mayor and Al Sharpton was his best buddy! Protests, riots, general mayhem, and a peak of 2,224 murders in 1991! Good times.
It all came to a grand crescendo on August 19, 1991 in Crown Heights (Brooklyn) when a boy named Gavin Cato was accidentally struck and killed by a car driven by a Jewish man. Four days of riots ensued urged on by the Rev. Al Sharpton (and weakly discouraged by Mayor Dinkins) ending with the stabbing death of Yankel Rosenbaum, an innocent Australian rabbinical student innocently walking down a Crown Heights street.
Dinkins lost his reelection bid in 1994 to Rudy Giuliani claiming it was because of racist voters (a claim he still makes to this day, by the way). So Rudy came in as a former US District Attorney and with the help of Police Commissioner Bill Bratton and then by Ray Kelly, set about cleaning the city up. Block by block, they cleaned up the streets and crime went down.
But fearing that he had not done enough damage and probably because he thought Rudy would see the light, Rev. Al staged another protest in 1995. This time against a Jewish landlord who was trying to evict a black business owner to expand another business of Jewish tenant and owner of Freddie's Fashion Mart. Yeah, this was Rev. Al's rally cry -
"We will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business."
Unfortunately, the protest turned violent (again), when one of the protesters entered Freddie's Fashion Mart and shot several people and then set the place on fire. Six employees died of smoke inhalation and the shooter killed himself. Al's only regret was using the term "white interloper".
Rudy didn't back down from his crusade of ridding the city of crime. He, Bratton and Kelly were so successful that the tourists started pouring in. Times Square morphed from some post-apocalyptic Mad Max movie into Disneyland. [Maybe they overshot the mark] Mayor Bloomberg continued with Ray Kelly and lowered violent crime to less than 300 murders in 2013.
{{{{woooo....wooooooo....dissolve to....}}}
Oh, there's still some good news! Bill Bratton is back as Police Commissioner. That's something, right?
CORRECTION: I have been spelling our new Mayor's last name incorrectly. It's "de Blasio", not "DiBlasio".