-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- Giuliani Caused Dorismond Funeral Riot by Robert Lederman I marched in the Patrick Dorismond Funeral procession from the funeral home on Flatbush Avenue to the front of the Holy Cross Church and was at the exact flash point where the violence initially took place at the barricaded corner of Flatbush and Church Avenues. Until the procession reached that intersection it was totally peacefull and non-violent. I left the area about twenty minutes later immediately after the casket was brought into the church when it became obvious that blood was going to flow in the street. What caused the violence to erupt and who it was designed to benefit, rather than how many bottles were thrown and how many were arrested or injured, are the questions that need to be answered. Media coverage of the march has almost completely focused on images and descriptions of barricades and bottles being thrown and of a U.S. flag being burned. I believe the violence was carefully orchestrated to take place at that exact location in order to eclipse the intense political nature of the march. The media had a massive presence at that spot including photographers and video crews that had been allowed by the police to set up on rooftops on either side of the street. How many times before have we seen the media exploit images of “terrorists” burning a flag to incite public opinion in support of military intervention? Remember also how many times the media showed a handful out of tens of thousands of peaceful protesters breaking windows in Seattle last year to justify a military style police response. I’ve been in as well as led a lot of anti-Giuliani marches and protests but this one was unique in that a group of thousands of Black New Yorkers were unanimous in their bitter denunciation of Mayor Giuliani. The single portrait of the Mayor as Hitler which I carried was just one of hundreds of Giuliani as Hitler portraits and intensely anti-Giuliani signs in the march. The chants, many of which were in French, were all about the Mayor and the urgency of his being removed from office. If there had been no violence the coverage would have had to focus entirely on the political message, which would have been devastating for Giuliani. There were no barricades set up along the entire length of Flatbush Avenue on the route between the funeral home and the church which is atypical of Giuliani/NYPD procedure. Marchers were allowed by the police to walk in the street and on the sidewalk without interference. As the column reached the corner of Flatbush and Church Avenues the situation was entirely different. The street was completely closed off by rows of hundreds of heavy steel barricades. Barricades lined the sidewalks and almost completely blocked off the entrance to the street. Behind the barricades were hundreds of police officers. The marchers were stopped at the entrance to the street and held there for no apparent reason. Vehicular traffic had been banned hours earlier and there was no traffic of any kind justifying the holding up of the column. From my perspective there was no reason whatsoever to stop and hold the procession at that point as they were finally in sight of the church other than to antagonize the marchers. Two young black males at the front suddenly picked up barricades and tossed them at the police. As the foremost obstacle was removed the crowd surged through the opening pushed along like a stream of water by the built up human pressure behind them. The same two young men that had initially tossed the barricades proceeded to systematically move down the street turning over barricade after barricade with the police standing right there doing nothing whatsoever to stop them and not even verbally warning them. As someone who has been falsely arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and even inciting a riot simply for holding up a cardboard sign I know this is not normal NYPD procedure. In my opinion, these young men were exactly what NYPD Commissioner Safir called them in an article in this Sunday’s NY Post POST 3/26/2000 SAFIR RAPS RIOTERS AS ‘THUGS' AND OUTSIDERS “The protesters who clashed with cops after Patrick Dorismond's funeral were outsiders "ginned up by demagogues trying to pursue their own agendas," Police Commissioner Howard Safir charged yesterday.” What Safir neglected to mention was that these young men were doing political work for Safir’s boss, the demagogue Rudy Giuliani. I’ve seen this exact same Giuliani technique at work a number of times. During the busiest day of the Diallo protests at the Bronx courthouse last year a black man got into the middle of the protesters and began urging them to attack the police, set fires and initiate violence. Not one person in the crowd responded to him other than to call him a police plant and order him to leave. He continued his harangue for almost 20 minutes with numerous police officers listening in and doing nothing despite the legal fact that the man was blatantly committing a felony, inciting to riot. The man was well dressed and appeared completely normal. Despite the inflamatory nature of his words he appeared calm, composed and professional. It’s a historical fact that Mayor Giuliani has personal expertise in inciting riots as his performance on the steps of City Hall during the 1993 Mayoral campaign demonstrated. Until the confrontation at the barricaded entrance to Church Avenue the march was dignified, peaceful and one hundred percent political. The marchers appeared to be mostly well-dressed middle class Haitians and certainly didn’t appear to be looking for any kind of trouble let alone to be involved in a violent riot. Many had little children with them. After the march reached the barricaded corner it became violent, chaotic and totally lost its political message, degenerating into a meaningless battle between the cops and the marchers. This outcome exactly supports Giuliani’s Manhattan Institute Eugenics-inspired ideology that Dorismond and all Black people are violent, genetically inferior and must be surpressed at all times by a massive police presence. It must be remembered that Giuliani has a Haitian connection that predates the Abner Louima and Dorismond incidents. As the # three official in the Reagan Justice Department Rudy Giuliani visited Haiti, met with Duvalier and bizzarely declared that there was no political repression in Haiti. If it can be proven that those who started throwing the barricades were not simply hotheads but were either NYPD agents working on behalf of the Mayor to disrupt the march or Haitians connected to repressive right-wing elements in Haiti that are available to work with Giuliani, and that the street was closed off in order to start a riot rather than to prevent one, then Mayor Giuliani and Commissioner Safir must be charged with some very serious crimes. Not only are these crimes against the people of New York City but in a sense they are even more crimes against the NYPD. If Giuliani and Safir are inciting riots against their own police in which officers are going to be injured or possibly killed, the NYPD’s various unions must do more than mouthing soundbites about how restrained the police were and how many injuries they sustained. These officers have a right to know if the Mayor is making a dangerous job more dangerous just to protect his political image. Robert Lederman is an artist, a regular columnist for the Greenwich Village Gazette [See: http://www.gvny.com/ for an extensive archive of Lederman columns] The Shadow, The Vigo-Examiner [see:http://www.vigo-examiner.com/archive.htm] 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 41 times to date for his anti-Giuliani activities 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. Robert Lederman, President of A.R.T.I.S.T. (Artists’ Response To Illegal State Tactics) [EMAIL PROTECTED] (718) 743-3722 http://www.openair.org/alerts/artist/nyc.html Also see: http://www.levymultimedia.com/lederman/index.htm <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soap-boxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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