I will never forget that day. It was May 1968, in Pomona, California. I was in my last semester at Emerson Junior High (named after the great essayist and anti-slavery activist, Ralph Waldo Emerson). At that time, the small industrial city was deeply divided along the de facto racial, economic and geographic border of Interstate 10, and there was a cloud of tension in the air.
On that beautiful day, Senator Bobby Kennedy made a campaign stop at the Pomona Valley Mall, as a hovering smog moved over to the next county as if in deference to the bright politico. My friends and I cut school to get a glimpse. The mall's concourse was as jammed as the final game of the World Cup. Along the way, this young, charismatic Senator reached out of the back of a flat bed truck and shook my hand, which I didn't wash for days (I was later suspended for playing hooky -- but I'm sure Emerson would have approved).
The massive throng that day was evenly divided: Half black, half white. But there was no tension. We were all on good behavior, for we had come to share the presence of this great individual who hated racism.
African-Americans adored Senator Kennedy, perhaps as much as the immortal abolitionist, Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts. Sumner, who shepherded the passage of the 13th and 14th Amendments had barely survived an 1856 cane-beating from Rep. Preston Brooks after taking the Senate floor to condemn President Pierce and the southern slave establishment for the bloodbath underway in the Kansas territory.
Today, as racism persists as America's most lethal domestic malady, this nation desperately needs more champions of the poor and disenfranchised such as Senators Sumner and Kennedy.
I do not know if Caroline Kennedy is that person. An Upper East Side life does not guarantee cognizance of the racial and social problems woven into the national fabric. But Caroline Kennedy is a prominent figure whose popularity would be a fool's errand to criticize, despite the lack of a paper trail to assess her political abilities and potential. Perhaps one might judge by the company she keeps, particularly among her newly-formed campaign circle -- one that is very white and very cosmopolitan.
Let's begin with her friend and neighbor, Mayor Mike Bloomberg. It is baffling that she breaks bread with a man whose record on race is actually worse than that of Rudy Giuliani. Consider the numbers: Last year alone, there were over 500,000 police stops and frisks -- mostly targeting people of color. In Bloomberg's New York, 1,500 blacks and Latinos are similarly robbed of their dignity and civil rights every single day. There has also been a tenfold increase in Gotham marijuana arrests of -- you guessed it, people almost exclusively of color. Bloomberg's personal pick as police commissioner, Raymond Kelly was the architect of the U.S. Customs' "flying while black" policy, in which 95% of the women strip-searched at American airports were black and Latino.
One can only wonder whether Caroline, used her access to Mayor Bloomberg's ear to whisper her objections to Hizzoner's racist policies.
Or his electoral megalomania. Billionaire Bloomberg has subverted the express will of City voters with a cynical, well-funded end run around twice-voted term limits, suborning City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and other feckless council members along the way.
Or his antipathy to the First Amendment. It was Mayor Bloomberg who welcomed the Republican National Convention in 2004, and denied anti-war demonstrators their right to protest, utilizing indiscriminate police sweeps for massive arrests, costing the city a bundle in civil law suits.
Why is Caroline so close to this spoiled little man? And why would Kennedy retain the services of Bloomberg's odious campaign consultant team?
The Knickerbocker firm is run by Josh Isay. I know the guy. He has the personality of a funeral director, the discretion of a Blackwater mercenary, and the ethics of an itinerant hangman. I had the occasion to work with him three years ago on a New York campaign where I watched him use his BlackBerry and pocket calculator to run up the campaign tab, like with a million excess palm cards he convinced the candidate to order from... himself! Bloomberg loaned Isay out to Connecticut war hawk Joseph Lieberman. Isay also managed NY Senator Charles Schumer's 1998 run against Alfonse D'Amato. While in the House, Schumer was point man for the 1996 crime bill that put more innocent people on death row because of a provision limiting appeals. Schumer went on to support the annexation of Iraq and the Patriot Act. Are you really sure this man is who you want, Caroline?
So, who is truly the best person to follow in the footsteps of Robert F. Kennedy, and bridge the racial gap that plagues this state and the rest of the nation? None other than our current Attorney General, Andrew Cuomo.
I met Andrew Cuomo in 2002, along with members of my group, Mothers of the New York Disappeared -- which represents those unjustly imprisoned under New York's Rockefeller Drug Laws, which is our own version of Jim Crow and convict leasing. Cuomo immediately called not for "reform," but for the repeal of these racist laws. He was the first major politician in 30 years to call for this action, which was near-revolutionary in New York politics. He lost his bid for Governor but, to our pleasant surprise, did not abandon the Rockefeller cause.
For the next two years, Cuomo held press conferences, went on television and spoke at major rallies, side by side with ex-prisoners and their families calling for an end to this experiment in state terror against people of color. The laws were eventually changed to a small extent -- but neither to his nor our satisfaction.
Not only did Cuomo continue to speak out, he also volunteered legal advice and other assistance to the limited number of prisoners eligible to have their draconian sentences reduced. One such is Severina Jacquez, who was serving 17 years-to-life for a questionable drug possession offense that had occurred 12 years earlier. This miscarriage of justice left Severina's 10 year-old daughter, Jennifer, to fend for herself on the streets of New York. But with Andrew's help, that sentence was eventually reduced to seven years, and Miss Jacquez will finally be reunited with her daughter this Christmas.
Cuomo also led the charge to keep the death penalty from rearing its ugly head back into our criminal code after it was struck down by the Court of Appeals in 2004 -- despite the support for this ultimate form of racism by a majority of New Yorkers, who have since caught up with Andrew's vision on the issue. If he were to go to Washington today, Cuomo would be our first Senator in decades to oppose the death penalty.
Andrew is also the founder of Help USA -- which provides housing and employment for the poor and the homeless. It is currently run by his sister Maria Cuomo, New York's own Mother Teresa. Help USA has also been a godsend to the Mothers of the New York Disappeared, particularly for the family of Vernonica Flournoy. Miss Flournoy was convicted of a minor drug offense in 1997 and sentenced to 8 years to life in prison, leaving her two preschool daughters in the care of her mother Eileen. Their house burned down one afternoon and they were left homeless. Help USA came to their rescue. Veronica died a few years later but not until she set up a future for her kids and 83 year old mother. There are similar stories.
In his short tenure as Attorney General, Andrew Cuomo has done more to protect the interests of the average New Yorker than others have done in two full terms. Among his accomplishments: A groundbreaking investigation of the security rating agency charged with protecting small investors; ending the practice of college and university kickbacks from loan companies to whom they steered their underfunded students; leading the opposition to the massive bonus payouts to Wall Street CEOs heading firms seeking emergency federal bailout funds; and pulling the covers back on Eliot Spitzer's central role in the nefarious "Troopergate" scandal which foreshadowed the disgraced former Governor's forced resignation.
Admittedly, I have had major differences with Mr. Cuomo over the years. But those differences centered on tactics and strategy; I am scorched-earth radical, while Andrew is an even-tempered pragmatic progressive. The difference, I suppose, is that he gets things done.
If Caroline Kennedy wants to serve her nation, perhaps she should follow in the footsteps of her grandfather, Joseph Kennedy, and seek his old job as Ambassador to the
Court of St James. I am sure President-elect Obama would have no problem with that. After all, at a critical point in the campaign, she did help him gain momentum against the woman whose seat she now so envies.
I hope Governor David Paterson does the right thing and appoints someone qualified for the job, someone who represents the average New Yorker.
Paterson doesn't owe Kennedy or Obama anything politically. They had nothing to do with his becoming governor. The only entity he is beholden to is that which elected him as the state's Lieutenant Governor in 2006: We The People.
Mayor Bloomberg, as the Village Voice's Wayne Barrett so cogently points out, is really the "Dr. Frankenstein" of the Caroline Kennedy's contrived Senate juggernaut. He treats the Governor as if he were his personal valet, symbolically stopping and frisking him and confiscating the Gov's constitutional right to make his own choice to fill the senate void.
Governor Paterson should resist the mayor's arrogant meddling and act like a statesman by appointing a statesman to fill Senator Clinton's soon-to-be evacuated seat. That statesman is Andrew Cuomo. He is the best suited, and has the demonstrated record to carry on the legacy of Robert F. Kennedy.