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Democratic Mayoral Candidate Forum: Gay and Lesbian Issues


• Gifford Miller: The Right Choices for the City's Future

• Fernando Ferrer: Human Rights for All

• Anthony Weiner: Democrats With a Big and Small “D”

On April 6, 2005, the four Democratic candidates for mayor - Gifford Miller, C. Virginia Fields, Fernando Ferrer, and Anthony Weiner - spoke at the Greater Voices mayoral forum, organized by several gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender groups in the city. The following is an edited transcript of the candidate’s opening remarks and a sample of some of the questions from the audience.

C.Virginia Fields: A Mayor Needs To Listen

I am now in my 16th year in government. I served eight years as a member of the New York City Council and I am now in my eighth as the president of the Borough of Manhattan. All of those experiences have provided a broad based knowledge and understanding of every aspect of government - budget, policy, personnel, administration, and I might add, political diplomacy. In addition to the time spent as an elected official, I also served as the chair of the local community board for two years and as a member of that board for 10 years. All of that is relevant to process of governance and I have fundamental differences with this mayor and his approach to government.

This mayor is one who governs by exclusion, with a top down approach and fait accompli decisions. He does not listen, does not include, and does not reach out. I believe the decisions that affect all of our daily lives are not well informed and certainly lack the input from elected officials and others in the community.

I will have a much more inclusive approach. I think opinions matter; point of view matters. When it comes to issues within the LGBT community, I will have that dialogue. I will use those relationships so that we can address issues in a way that is most beneficial for the whole community.

When it comes to education, let us include educators and not make those decisions with a trial and error process that does not lead us to the best result for our school children.

When it comes to housing, there are steps we can take, concrete steps to build affordable housing.

Let us involve and listen, so we can get things done.

My work with you, the LGBT community, has been extremely meaningful. I am for marriage equality. I am for the Dignity for All Students Act. I am for adoption rights for LGBT parents as well as the repeal of “Don’t Ask; Don’t Tell” because it doesn’t work. I am for the protection of transgendered people.

As borough president, I have appointed more people from the LGBT community to local community boards than any other borough president in history. That is important because the voices need to be there to shape decisions. I have been happy to fund the work of the common law health center as well as the LGBT community center.

I understand the sting of prejudice, the sting of discrimination. As an African-American woman, I know what it means to be locked out, left out, and told, “you don’t matter, and you are not worthy.” In my case, it’s the color of my skin. In your case, it is sexual orientation, plus color of skin. It is one thing to knock down discrimination in laws, but it is another thing to deal with attitudes. What we need to do now in the city and in this country is change attitudes. We have a lot of work to do.

I am looking forward to being a leader of this city, delivering a clear mandate and projecting the kind of attitude that should relate to all of us - leading us forward, working together, and getting things done.

QUESTION: One unfortunate aspect of our city’s diversity is the way politics of different people varies in different neighborhoods. We have neighborhoods where people who spoke in favor of the “children of the rainbow” curriculum had to have a police escort out of a public hearing. And the tires of a blood mobile at a lesbian blood drive were slashed. As a candidate from Manhattan, what will you do to ensure the safety of LGBT people in the outer boroughs?

Fields:It is unfortunate that we have to ensure the safety of people because of their sexual orientation, but it is real and we must address that. I think tolerance is important in understanding different people in different communities as it relates to sexual orientation, race, and other issues and that it must be taught through our schools, our churches, our religious institutions, in our homes. That is the way you get people to discuss it. These are issues that we haven’t confronted.

Let’s do some public things and have some discussions. Bring some LGBT people together with non-LGBT people. Let’s open up these discussions in the same way we have in certain communities of color around issues of HIV/AIDS. Many in the black community did not want to admit that this was an issue in our community and we allowed it to move further and further before we did something about it.

We should acknowledge it, recognize it, bring it into open discussions, have people in leadership positions like the mayor talk about this and talk about the importance of respecting people. In incidents where we need to reinforce police or protection, let’s do that.

We are very concerned about what happened to the African-American gay man Rashawn Brazell [who was murdered in February] out in Brooklyn. Very little has been said about it. Very little has been done about it. That should be discussed and become part of a larger discussion. If the crime was a result of him being gay, let’s use it to teach and change minds and attitudes. Let’s use every vehicle and mechanism in our disposal to have those discussions.

Q:In the nearly four years that Mike Bloomberg has been mayor he has not appointed one openly gay man or lesbian woman to the courts. What do you make of this?

Fields:You’d have to ask Mayor Bloomberg why that hasn’t been done. I can only say that Mayor Fields would take a much different approach. I would look to be diverse in terms of my appointments to various positions including judges and that includes members of the LGBT communities, as well as others from various racial, ethnic, and religious communities.

Q:When you get to be mayor, how will you extend affordable housing programs?

Fields:One of the things we started in my office about four years ago was a Mitchell-Lama task force because we saw that we were coming to the end of a 20-year period where owners of Mitchell-Lama buildings were being bought out. That started in Manhattan and it has now spread citywide. We were able to encourage Assemblyman Vito Lopez to introduce legislation in Albany that would enable us to get some Mitchell-Lama housing under the rent stabilization program. As mayor I would be a strong advocate in Albany, because if we lose a lot of the people who live in Mitchell-Lama developments, working people, middle-income people who have stabilized our communities and if that housing becomes only market rate, then we will see massive displacement. We need to fight back at all costs.

With respect to affordable housing overall, we have a plan and we will work to implement that plan. That is to put in place ways to really create affordable housing. The reality is that the city must invest dollars. When we look at how we were able to build affordable housing in the past under Mayor Ed Koch, money was put into the budget, and subsidies were leveraged to increase private investment. It would start with the funds put into the Battery Park City fund for affordable housing. We haven’t had a mayor use those funds since Koch. At the rate we are going, we could have approximately $1 billion in that fund over the next ten years.

We also need to take an inventory of city owned properties throughout this city. And instead of selling city owned property at market rate prices as the administration is currently doing, we need to make it part of the incentive package as we have in the past. I know it can be done. On 112th Street to 135th Street, we sold city land at a nominal cost and we were able to provide incentives to work with developers to build housing at different levels so people in different income levels could afford it.

Other Candidates speeches:

• Gifford Miller: The Right Choices for the City's Future

• Fernando Ferrer: Human Rights for All

• Anthony Weiner: Democrats With a Big and Small “D”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Democratic Mayoral Candidate Forum: Gay and Lesbian Issues


 

• Gifford Miller: The Right Choices for the City's Future

• C. Virginia Fields: A Mayor Needs to Listen

• Fernando Ferrer: Human Rights for All

On April 6, 2005, the four Democratic candidates for mayor - Gifford Miller, C. Virginia Fields, Fernando Ferrer, and Anthony Weiner - spoke at the Greater Voices mayoral forum, organized by several gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender groups in the city. The following is an edited transcript of the candidate’s opening remarks and a sample of some of the questions from the audience.

Anthony Weiner: Democrats with a Big and a Small "D"

I have a history of fighting for civil rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered New Yorkers. When I was running for Congress in 1998, long before the issue of gay marriage was particularly hot, and at that time civil unions was the big issue being contested, I endorsed gay marriage.

It was at the Lambda endorsement meeting that I did. Within 48 hours, there was a meeting of the largest Orthodox [Jewish] organization in New York. One of my opponents was an icon of the civil rights movement - Noach Dear. I didn’t say what type of an icon, just that he was iconic. Somehow he had a tape recording of my remarks, which he had reproduced and distributed on the tables at the dinner. There was speculation at the time that this might be the ruin of my campaign.

You have to understand a little about the district I represent. They are great people from Brooklyn and Queens in communities of Flatbush, the Rockaways, Rego Park and the like. There was a great deal of speculation that in the conservative, Orthodox [Jewish], and Catholic community - that maybe support of gay marriage would be the undoing of a very close campaign.

I would argue that I did not get elected in spite of that support, but because of it. I began a discussion about basic human dignity and basic rights of all New Yorkers. I engaged in a discussion with people who to this day strongly disagree with me about why we in the Jewish community should always be conscious and careful not to deny rights to anyone.

I also started a career where I have been able to win overwhelming majorities in the same district that Mike Bloomberg is getting a Republican primary from his right. Let me repeat that. I won 70 percent of the vote this year in the district where Mike Bloomberg is being challenged for not being conservative enough.

Why is this important? It is important because one of the things we need to do is recognize that we need to speak truth to all corners of the city. The next evolution of the debate about equal rights for all and true civil rights for all is going to be to take those people who think that someone having the right to marry who they love is an apocalyptic change for our country and teach them otherwise.

This is the most important way that Mike Bloomberg let us down. When Mike Bloomberg took the law firm of the city of New York and challenged the lower court ruling on gay marriage, he took the power of city and all of us and put it behind challenging that decision - and it was bad.

It was bad for another reason. It denied us a moment of political victory. It denied the moment for me to go to my constituents in conservative part of Queens and say, “look the sky hasn’t fallen, you don’t have chaos in the streets, you don’t have anarchy.”

He denied us a moment to engage in a debate and to say for this moment in time gay marriage is legal in New York. And it hasn’t taken away anyone else’s rights. By him challenging that decision and announcing almost overnight that he was going to do so, not only did he put the full legal weight of the city against us, but also he denied us those precious few weeks or months of political victory.

That is window into the type of mayor Mike Bloomberg is and a window into how I would be different.

People make the argument: Does it really matter whether Mike Bloomberg is a Republican who acts like a Democrat or a Democrat who postures as a Republican? They say there is no conservative or liberal or Democratic or Republican way to collect the garbage.

I tell you that there is an enormous difference whether there is a Democrat or Republican running the show.

One example, imagine for a moment that we had the Republican convention here in town. The mayor of the city of New York had the opportunity to speak at that convention. Imagine if he would have said, “My Republican friends, welcome to New York. Welcome to this great city. Welcome to this great diversity. Enjoy yourself while you are here.” But while he had this moment in the sun, imagine if he had also said, “The way that you are treating people who are different than the Republican Party is an outrage. The way that you are dividing one community against another is an outrage. The way you are stigmatizing people because they fell in love with a person of their own gender is an outrage.” It would have taken that issue and elevated it overnight to the front page of the New York Times.

This notion that you get more with sugar than with vinegar is sometimes true. But it hasn’t been the truth in this case.

It is more than what you say; it is also the process that you believe in. We as democrats with small “d” and big “D” believe that there is a way to govern. Do any of us believe that if we had a truly open process and democracy was followed and we sat down with the most creative people on the planet - New Yorkers, the most creative land use theorists, the most creative engineers, the most creative open space thinkers -we would have come up with a stadium for the West Side of Manhattan? Not in a thousand years.

When we were revamping the education system, if we had said let’s bring in some teachers, parents, and had the audacity to ask other elected officials about their experiences, would we have the kinds of problems we have in education today? It is more than just process for process sake. The outcomes you get when you practice democratic with a small “d” and a capital “D” are simply better.

When the mayor proposed selling the West Side railyards, he said let’s get $100 million. He said, “Let’s not get any other bids. I made a deal with a fellow billionaire, that’s it.” Well even the modified open process that the MTA followed netted us an extra $300 to $400 million. How does the mayor justify that? How does he explain why he was willing to give away $400 million of our money?

This notion that he is a brilliant businessman above reproach and he is incapable of making a bad decision - I have to tell you there is more “pay to play” in this administration than any administration in recent memory. It doesn’t come in the form of campaign contributions, which are disclosed within minutes. They come through contributions to the Olympic 2012 committee. They come over dinner parties with crystal chandeliers on the East Side of Manhattan. Those are rooms we never get into, and that is going to change when I become mayor.

We are going to have a different kind of dialogue in this city. We are going to disagree, we are going to fight - we always do. But that isn’t going to be what determines whether or not we proceed in this city.

If you agree with me that we need a true spirit of democratic reform in this city, where are you going to get it?

I would argue that you get it from me - someone who is not beholden to the big developers for his campaign contributions; someone that doesn’t come from the womb of the traditional Democratic machine; someone who has truly been elected as an independent Democratic. I wasn’t supported by the Brooklyn Democratic party when I ran for City Council, I was outspent three to one, and I won. When I ran for Congress, I was opposed by the Queens Democratic Party and the Brooklyn Democratic Party, I was outspent three to one, and I won.

The reason is I engage people in the discussion of ideas and ideals. I do it everyday. I don’t think of myself as a politician who is going to advance himself - although if that happens it’s a nice benefit - but I think of the families in my district. I think of them when they sit at the breakfast table and they think about the school they are going to drop their kid off at and how the experienced teachers are giving way to a less experience crew. I think of them as they go to the subway and hope that this is the one in three days that it is actually going to work. When they are on lunch break and they look at their coworkers and realize how impossible it is to find housing in this city unless you are very wealthy. And the moment they have a health care crisis that can lead them into bankruptcy. These are the things I think about and why I work so hard. We need to start fighting for our city again.

Too often we as Democrats come into these knife fights with library books. This Mike Bloomberg has another thing coming with me. I am going to hit him with so many rights he is going to be begging for a left. I am going to be in his face every single day.

QUESTION: Recently there have been several high profile gay bashing incidents in the city. As mayor, what would you do to reduce those situations and what would you do when they do happen?

Weiner: For too long in this city, we have had mayors who have treated the fundamental rights of gay people as a political issue. Bloomberg has done it. Giuliani certainly did it. There is too much measuring of our reactions based on who might be offended or put off by the things we say. Any increase in crime is bad, and there has been an increase in these types of crimes. I have never heard the mayor talk about it. I never hear the police commissioner talk about it.

We need to elevate these crimes out of the nuisance category. We have to educate a police force that is frankly made up of very young officers who often come from backgrounds different from the communities they patrol and we have to make sure they get it.

That means bringing people to roll call and explaining what it’s like to be a gay man in this city. And treat these as hot spot issues as any other crime. I’m not convinced they do that. We worship at the alter of the seven index crimes FBI crimes and what has gone up or down, but to an individual person who is a victim, it is terrible.

It really strikes at the fabric of our city is when there is a blow struck against somebody because of the community they represent and no one knows that better than a Jewish New Yorker. When there is an anti-Semitic attack, we all react. When there is a gay bashing attack, frankly all New Yorkers should be outraged.

Q: I am from Staten Island, a very conservative community and a Republican stronghold. We are hoping to have a gay pride parade in June and we doubt that our Republican borough president or any of the elected officials - Democrat or Republican - will march with us. What would you do as mayor would to convince and encourage your Democratic colleagues to embrace the concept of human rights for everyone in the LGBT community?

Weiner: One thing I would do is make it kosher for all of my Democratic colleges by doing it myself. I don’t persuade Orthodox people in my district that I am right and they are wrong, but I try. More important, I go to them and explain to them that I am not going to talk past them on the issue, I am going to engage them. Sooner or later they are going to live in a New York City where gay marriage is not only legal, it is common, and they don’t even notice. It is just a matter of when that realization sets in. I honestly think one of the obligations of all of us in public life is to lead.

Don’t believe the hype. I am going to win in Staten Island. I am going to go out there and talk to them about the fact that Wal-Mart is offensive to the values of all New Yorkers. I am going to explain to those labor households that the way they got so comfortable in suburbia is because we supported the labor movement in this city and in this country. I am going to talk to them about how their president has left them behind. I am going to explain to them how they are less safe because of the cuts of the Bush administration. I am going to go right at them.

I don’t buy for a moment that it is going to be a Republican stronghold in the city of New York. I am going to win Staten Island, and some of that may be cause my name is Anthony, but that’s another story.

Q: I am the child of two Holocaust survivors. Ten years ago, the city spent $800,000 to build a holocaust memorial in Sheepshead Bay. Although it is dedicated to all of the victims, there were ten stones that were supposed to be inscribed to memorialize the homosexuals who died during the Nazi era. You happen to be listed on the board of directors of the group that has made that decision. If you are mayor can you get them inscribed? And what can you do in the meantime?

Weiner: I was a city councilman when it was created - all of the elected officials in the area are listed [on the board of directors]. And when this controversy first arose, I insisted upon the original plan. When it came up again, I believe I sent a letter again. I will ask the mayor. And I will ask that my name be taken off unless they do it forthwith.

Other Candidates Speeches

• Gifford Miller: The Right Choices for the City's Future

• C. Virginia Fields: A Mayor Needs to Listen

• Fernando Ferrer: Human Rights for All

Academic Freedom, Intimidation, And Mayoral Politics: The Case of Rashid Khalidi


Disputes between students and professors at Columbia University over how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is taught have escalated into national news, with partisans on both sides claiming to fight on behalf of academic freedom and against intimidation.

Last October, aggrieved Jewish students put together a half-hour film called "Columbia Unbecoming" through a pro-Israel group based in Boston called The David Project. In the film some of the students describe conduct by professors at Columbia's Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures Department that they felt constituted intimidation and smacked of anti-Semitism.

The accusations got much attention, in The New York Timesand elsewhere. One Israeli accused Professor Joseph Massad of asking him, "How many Palestinians have you killed?" Another student said she asked Massad whether it was true Israel sometimes give warnings before it bombs so that people wouldn’t get hurt, and the professor replied: “If you're going to deny the atrocities being committed against Palestinians, then you can get out of my classroom!" The accused professors denied the incidents had occurred, or said the accusers’ versions were twisted beyond recognition.

Columbia President Lee Bollinger appointed a panel to investigate. In late March, the panel's reportfound that while no professor was guilty of anti-Semitism, student complaints about how they were treated when they dissented from a professor's view were not dealt with in a timely or thorough fashion.

One name not mentioned in the report, though, was Professor Rashid Khalidi, director of the Middle East Institute at the university. His was the one case that spread beyond the Morningside Heights campus into the city’s public school system and even into mayoral politics.

The New York Sun began this particular controversy on February 15, when it reported Khalidi’s involvement in a teacher training program on the Middle East for the city’s public school teachers. The newspaper said that Khalidi’s “professorship is named in memory of Edward Said, a divisive scholar, and is paid for in part with a donation from the United Arab Emirates,” and said that Khalidi had called Israel a “racist” state with an “apartheid system,” a charge Khalidi denies.

When the Sun contacted public officials for comment, Congressman Anthony Weiner(D-Brooklyn), a candidate for the Democratic nomination for mayor, said : "For my money, this guy shouldn't even be teaching at Columbia, let alone being recruited to train our Board of Ed teachers.” (He told me later, though, that he had not said that Khalidi should be dismissed by Columbia.)

The case against Khalidi did not involve his conduct as a teacher trainer, about which nobody complained. In fact, Mark Wilner, an assistant principal at Midwood High School in Brooklyn who took Khalidi’s training course on the Middle East, later told the Forward that “his session was completely apolitical,” focusing on geography and demography.

Nevertheless, the day the Sun’s initial report appeared, Chancellor Joel Klein barred Khalidi from the teacher training program. “Considering his past statements, Rashid Khalidi should not have been included in a program that provided professional development for [Department of Education] teachers and he won't be participating in the future,” the Department of Education said in a statement.

Bollinger reacted to Klein’s action against Khalidi by pulling Columbia out of the training program for public school teachers entirely.

Khalidi himself e-mailed me that the teacher-training program “has been going on successfully for over 12 years. They have never paid it the slightest attention until the gutter press and publicity-hound politicians raised the matter…From his own statements, it is clear that Rep. Anthony Weiner has no idea what I have said or not said. This is no surprise if he relies on the gutter press for information about my views, as he apparently does. He has misrepresented and taken out of context what I have said, as have the trashy newspapers on which he relies for his ‘facts,’ and for publicizing his own outrageous anti-Arab statements.”

Weiner did not reply to Khalidi’s specific charges, but said, “you are perfectly free to say hateful things, but that doesn’t mean you are entitled to a city contract.”

When the Forward pressedWeiner to be specific about things Khalidi had said that troubled him, Weiner said, “I am by no means an expert on the guy’s work, but what I have seen anecdotally on this guy is troubling.”

When I did my own pressing, Weiner’s office e-mailed me three quotes they said that Khalidi made that the Congressman thought justified the professor’s dismissal by the Department of Education:

1) "Occupation and settlements are the basic sources of violence in this conflict, and only if they are ended can the violence be halted. It cannot be simpler than that,” Khalidi wrote for the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in “Challenges and Opportunities” in 2002.

2) References to Israel being a "racist" and "apartheid" state. That America has been "brainwashed by Israel." (Interview for the Miami Herald, October 2000)

3) "For these American Likudniks and their Israeli counterparts, sad to say, the tragedy of September 11 was a godsend: It enabled them to draft the United States to help fight Israel's enemies." ("Attack Iraq: The real reasons" In These Times magazine, Jan 27, 2003.)

I was unable to verify the second quote from the Miami Herald and Khalidi has denied making any such statements. Indeed, he is quoted in the Forward as saying that there are “scholars who will not talk about these things without using the word racist, but I am not one of them. I do not think Zionism is racist. When we talk about some of the contemporary laws, there are policies that I consider racist and discriminatory.”

Asked if as mayor he would try to dismiss a teacher if he objected to his or her statements made outside of school hours, Weiner said, “if someone’s hateful ranting outside the classroom raises questions about his credibility in the classroom, the chancellor would have it in his rights to question his academic qualifications.” He added, “It is all of our obligations to find a balance between freedom of speech and our obligation to speak out when someone says something very hurtful or tries to intimidate students.” Elaborating on this idea at a conference at Columbia in mid-March on “The Middle East and Academic Integrity on the American Campus,” Weiner said that “free speech does not come without equal part responsibility. There is a rise of anti-Semitism that is almost indisputable on college campuses.”

Marc Stern of the American Jewish Congress, however, told the Forward, “It’s not as if we’re rejoicing that Khalidi gets an audience. But we don’t think the way to go about it is by treating Khalidi as if he is not qualified to teach on the Middle East.”

At a recent press conference outside the Department of Education, the New York Civil Liberties Unionwas joined by playwright Tony Kushner and some student leaders from Columbia to protest Klein’s dismissal of Khalidi.

Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said, “When a government agency seeks to punish or to retaliate against an individual based on the individual’s political views or association, which amounts to ‘viewpoint discrimination,’ [it] raises serious First Amendment issues.”

Kushner called Klein’s decision “shameless.” He said, “even if Professor Khalidi’s views resembled those that have been attributed to him by his critics--and they do not--firing a teacher on the basis of his or her political beliefs is impermissible. Chancellor Klein certainly knows this.”

Whatever Klein knows, he is not saying. The only response that the Department of Education would make to our inquiry on the Khalidi matter was the statement (without elaboration), “This is a matter of providing professional development for teachers who are instructing our children.”

If Khalidi were an employee of the public schools, it is extremely doubtful that the Department of Education would have any recourse against him whatsoever for expressing his views outside of school hours. As Ron Davis of the United Federation of Teachers points out, “our teachers are covered by the First Amendment. What a teacher says off school grounds when they aren’t working is strictly up to the individuals.”

But when you are dealing with non-government employees who either volunteer in the schools or do so under contract, it is a grayer area. The Gay Men’s Health Crisis, which did a lot of AIDS education in the schools in the late 1980s and early 1990s, was once banned from doing so by a vote of the Board of Education after one of their more sexually explicit brochures was discovered on a table at a school health fair.

But Khalidi was not accused of unbecoming conduct as a teacher trainer. The Department of Education is not revealing what regulations or standards he violated, if any.

Andy Humm is a former member of the City Commission on Human Rights. He is co-host of the weekly "Gay USA" on Manhattan Neighborhood Network (34 on Time-Warner; 107 on RCN) on Thursdays at 11 PM.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



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