Police Brutality Issue Shakes up NY Primary id BAA20760; Fri, 12 Sep 1997 01:49:02 -0400 Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit ------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the September 18, 1997 issue of Workers World newspaper ------------------------- ISSUE OF RACIST POLICE BRUTALITY SHAKES UP NEW YORK PRIMARY By Shelley Ettinger New York The political establishment in the biggest, richest city in the United States was shaken Sept. 9. Civil-rights leader the Rev. Al Sharpton made such a strong showing in the Democratic mayoral primary that there will have to be a runoff to determine which Democrat will challenge Republican Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in the general election. Why did Sharpton--with no TV commercials and almost no money to run a campaign--do so well? This was a message vote. Above all, it was a protest against racism and police brutality. In August, not quite a month before primary day, Brooklyn police raped and tortured Haitian immigrant Abner Louima. The cops are still getting paid while Louima remains in the hospital. A growing sense of outrage has swept the city--uniting the Haitian community, all the oppressed, and all who stand for solidarity against racism. Giuliani epitomizes the racist power structure. He is so closely identified with the police that he has become the chief opponent in the struggle against police brutality here. Sharpton made this issue the center of his campaign. The results show that the primary was a referendum on racism and police brutality. The other two candidates--Manhattan Borough President Ruth Messinger and City Councilmember Sal Albanese--showed no enthusiasm for this fight. Messinger spoke out on the Louima case tardily and feebly. Albanese, who tried to fashion himself as a pro-labor candidate, actually aligned himself with the police, alienating progressive support he might have hoped for. The Sharpton vote was also a vote against workfare, against poverty, against unemployment--against the same old politicians who have nothing to offer New York's working class. In a city gripped with high unemployment while Wall Street profits soar, the vote for Sharpton was aimed at the status quo. The media had presented Messinger as a shoo-in to win the primary. She had raised a large campaign fund. Instead, she got only 39 percent of the vote. Sharpton came in second with 32 percent. Albanese got 21 percent. Most tellingly, Sharpton won in the city's biggest borough--Brooklyn, which on its own has a bigger Black population than any city in the country. He carried the Bronx, whose population is overwhelmingly Black and Latino. He almost won in Queens, known as "the international borough." He probably would have won there too if the hundreds of thousands of immigrants in Queens had been eligible to vote. Messinger carried only Manhattan. This longtime liberal had spent the primary campaign conciliating with the right wing. She called for cutting $1 billion from the city budget--by laying off workers and taking away many of their rights and benefits. Her turn to the right backfired. Messinger failed to generate any enthusiasm among the Democrats' traditional constituency. A great many people--in particular, most Black and Latino voters--responded to her metamorphosis into a Clinton Democrat by registering a protest and pulling the lever for Al Sharpton. Both the Amsterdam News, the city's leading Black newspaper, and the Spanish-language daily El Diario endorsed Sharpton. That gave him a boost in the days leading to the primary. In a buoyant speech after the primary results were announced, and flanked by activist Dick Gregory and Rep. Jose Serrano, Sharpton called on the poor and oppressed to join his campaign. He said he was running for the dispossessed, victims of police brutality, the unemployed, the poor, the HIV-positive, those who have prison records, those who have been marginalized. The turnout in this primary was considered low. Capitalist party politics have turned off many in the working class for a long time. But with the Democratic runoff set for Sept. 23, the New York mayoral campaign has suddenly become a lot more interesting. - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted if source is cited. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: ww@workers.org. For subscription info send message to: info@workers.org. Web: http://workers.org) ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytrc-09.12.97-01:49:06-12931