In Thompson's defeat, seeds of future victory

It would be a mistake to classify Bloomberg's November 4 mayoral reelection win as anything but a defeat for the working people of New York City. At the same time, however, there is no reason to despair; on the contrary the election results represent a basis for optimism moving forward.

First, to dispense with the obvious: Although the billionaire representative of Wall Street, big developers and the Republican Party won, New York City elected John Liu comptroller, marking the first time in this city's more than 400 year history any Asian American has held citywide office. Further, a grand people's coalition formed around Liu: his campaign was composed essentially of the city's entire labor movement; the African American, Latino and Asian communities; women; youth; the LGBT community and a large percentage of white liberals.

It is this exact coalition that, if it remains united, can usher in all sorts of progressive changes in New York City.

Further, there was important progress made in the city council elections. For the first time ever, racially and nationally oppressed council members are in the majority. In other words, the council has actually begun to reflect the people of New York City. A prime example would be Margaret Chin, who defeated an incumbent and became the first Chinese American to represent the district that includes Chinatown-ever.

But the results of the mayoral race itself, though it was a defeat, should leave us feeling hopeful. Firstly, the Democratic challenger, lost to Bloomberg by less than five points, about 46 percent to 51. This is an astoundingly low margin of victory for Bloomberg, given that pollsters predicted the incumbent "independent" (read: Republican who supported George W. Bush and thinks Giuliani would be a good governor) would score a margin of victory in the double digits, as he did in 2005. In that election, he beat Fernando Ferrer by nearly 20 percentage points.

Bloomberg also put a lot into this election: officially, he put about $100 million into his campaign, the most any candidate has spent vying for municipal office in the history of the world, literally speaking. (By contrast, Thompson, who abided by the city's campaign finance rules, and therefore spent less than $7 million.) However, in reality, Bloomberg spent even more: if one counts money the Bloomberg campaign spent essentially buying the Republican and Independence Party lines, as well as giving "charitable donations" to agencies that, in turn, endorsed and even put people on the street for Bloomberg, the figure is closer to $200 million.

With his money, Bloomberg was able to send daily fliers to people, targeting recipients by race, gender, party affiliation, neighborhood and so on. He was able to run TV spots attacking Thompson every day for months. And he had the best campaign operation money can buy: hundreds of paid staff and a very highly sophisticated get-out-the-vote apparatus.

But with all of that, and two terms of incumbency, Bloomberg was only able to get ahead of Thompson by five points.

How did Thompson do so well, one might ask. The first thing to be said is that people don't really like Bloomberg that much anymore: he's known to be an out of touch billionaire, and people are especially unhappy with his maneuvers to change city election law to allow himself the opportunity to run for a third term (though New Yorkers had voted twice to limit all city offices to two-terms).

Thompson himself was good on the issues, and generally connected with the working people of New York City. While no campaign is perfect, his hit most of the right notes. He campaigned on a platform of, as he put it, taking the city back from Wall Street and the big developers who have been pushing working New Yorkers further and further out of the city. (In fact, a recent study showed that 1.1 million working New Yorkers had already left.)

Further, he had the backing of the vast majority of the African American, Latino, and Asian American elected leadership, and most of those communities. According to the New York Times, 82 percent of African Americans, and 65 percent of Latinos, voted for Thompson. Large sections of the Asian communities voted for Thompson, especially South Asians, who voted 61 percent for Thompson.

Thompson also had the backing from a number of the city's largest labor unions, including Transport Workers Union Local 100, AFSCME District Council 37, and a host of others. Labor did an impressive job of mobilizing the vote for Thompson. In many areas, DC 37 (which had endorsed Bloomberg in 2005) and TWU Local 100 worked together to bring out voters and drive them to polling places. All of the unions made efforts to contact their members and ask them to vote for Thompson. CWA Local 1180 put $500,000 into advertising, and TWU held several demonstrations and distributed leaflets condemning Bloomberg.

Thompson had the backing of most progressive elected officials as well as dozens of Democratic Party clubs, community organizations and churches.

Essentially, Thompson's campaign had the makings of the sort of all-people's coalition, the type we previously wrote would make it possible to defeat Bloomberg and his millions. As it turns out, we were correct in that assessment. A relatively little-known candidate, with less than $10 million (compared to $200 million), because of a broad coalition, nearly slew Goliath.

The question then arises: was it actually possible to win? The answer is an emphatic "yes." While Thompson had many things in his favor, he had a lot working against him (aside from a lack of money.)

Firstly, we can't ignore racism, which was fanned at the top, i.e. from the Bloomberg campaign itself, as a deciding factor. While it is true that there have been great strides forward in the fight against racism, especially with the election of President Obama, we are nowhere near living in a "post-racial" society. Simply looking at a map of who voted for Thompson and who voted for Bloomberg gives lie to that story: where red denotes an area that supported Bloomberg, the whitest neighborhoods were, on the map, also the reddest. To be sure, thousands of white people voted for Thompson, but there is clear evidence that a large percentage of the city's white population is still under the influence of racist ideology. (This was made shockingly stark in a city council race in Queens, where extreme racist rhetoric was used by a Republican pagan (literally) to defeat Kevin Kim, a Korean American.)

The Bloomberg campaign was almost explicit in its racism: Giuliani, stumped for Bloomberg, telling a crowd that "we don't want to go back to the days of Dinkins." He added, "You know what I mean." We know what he meant.

Another factor was a feeling, promoted by Bloomberg, that the incumbent's victory was inevitable. After the election, campaign leaders said this was an overriding strategy of the campaign: the spending overkill, even though Bloomberg's team knew it would annoy New Yorkers, was aimed at convincing people that he could not be defeated. This helped to suppress the vote for Thompson: If Bloomberg will win anyway, many reasoned, why go and vote at all?

This air of inevitability also played into another huge problem for Thompson: a split labor movement. While some big labor unions supported Thompson, a greater number sat the election out. SEIU 1199 and the United Federation of Teachers both avoided making any endorsement, while SEIU 32BJ and some others endorsed Bloomberg. It's possible to say that any one of these huge unions, with tens or hundreds of thousands of members each, could potentially have pushed Thompson to victory, had they either endorsed Thompson, not endorsed Bloomberg, or, better yet, both.

While we would never actually condone endorsing Bloomberg or sitting out the elections, We can certainly understand why they did: Bloomberg essentially told them, "I'm going to win the election, and you know what will happen to you if you oppose me." Most of these unions were simply concerned what might happen to them if they stood up to Bloomberg and he won: would he attack their contract? Would he go after them and do real damage to their members?

The results of this mayoral race are contradictory. We can look at the elections and see a bitter defeat, given that Bloomberg won. We could look at them and see a victory, given the closeness of the race and all the obstacles that Thompson and the movement around him had to go up against.

Most importantly, we can see opportunity.

What we said before was proven true: If we can build a movement of the labor movement, the African American, Latino and Asian communities, white liberals and other progressive forces drawn around that core, the people can defeat anyone. In this election, this coalition was built, but only partially. But even a partially built coalition was able to put us within a hair of replacing a 17th richest man in the world, who represents, as mayor, Wall Street and big developers with a mayor sympathetic to labor and progressive sectors of New York City.

Next time we go all the way.

New York bias attack points to rise in anti-gay violence

New Yorkers were horrified at the recent near-fatal beating of Jack Price near his home in the College Point neighborhood. Though the two men thought to be the perpetrators are now in custody, and at least one of them is facing charges of a hate crime, many activists and leaders say that way more must be done to combat anti-gay violence in this city.

Price, who identified his attackers after the beating, is currently in a medically induced coma at New York Hospital as he is being treated for cracked ribs, a lacerated spleen, collapsed lungs and a broken jaw.

The attackers were shown beating the man for a long period of time on a nearly empty street. Twice he seemed he would be able to break free, and twice he was pulled back for more beating.

"It is horrible incidents like this that remind us that we must all stand together against those who inflict such harm," said current city Comptroller Bill Thompson, who is also the Democratic candidate for mayor.

Thompson reiterated a point that is central to his campaign: unity of working New Yorkers against all forms of bigotry and oppression is to the benefit of everyone, saying that "we must work so that our city is one where all people - no matter their sexual orientation, ethnicity, immigration status, or any characteristic - feel safe in all communities. My thoughts and prayers go to Mr. Price as well as to his family and friends."

City Council member and almost certainly the city's next Comptroller John Liu called the crime "absolutely atrocious." An ally of Thompson, Liu has built a strong relationship with the city's GLBT community, as well as trade unions, the African American, Latino and Asian communities, and white liberals.

While anti-gay violence is far from unknown in this city, even in neighborhoods considered to be gay enclaves, this beating, which was captured on surveillance cameras, has shocked people for its extreme brutality.

"You get tired of doing these press conferences," Christine Quinn, speaker of the City Council said. "When someone is attacked for being who they are and for being proud of who they are, there is no other explanation for that attack than hatred and bigotry."

Quinn was joined at the press conference by State Sen. Thomas K. Duane, Democratic city council nominees Kevin Kim and Yen Chou, as well as Liu and others.

According to a report by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence programs, incidents of violence against LGBT people increased by two percent from 2007 to 2008, "continuing the trend of a 24 percent total increase in 2007." National trends are far worse. "Bias-related murders were at their highest rate since 1999 with 29 known anti-LGBT murders committed in 2008. Reports of violence in Milwaukee increased 64 percent and Minnesota and Chicago saw increases of 48 percent and 42 percent, respectively."

In a darkly ironic twist, Price was nearly murdered on October 9, the day before the national march for GLBT rights in Washington, D.C., and President Obama's historic speech to the Human Rights Campaign in which he pledged to end the ban on gays serving in the military.

Thousands demonstrate against NY State for fair budget, taxes

By Dan Margolis

NEW YORK—Tens of thousands of people—unionists, community members, religious leaders and elected officials—came out here, March 5, at City Hall and in cities across the state to demand a fair budget for working people, and that the rich pay their fair share in taxes.

New York City Comptroller Bill Thompson told the nearly 75,000 people gathered, “We must ensure that City Hall and Albany put forth proposals that take into account the needs of all New Yorkers. We cannot balance the budget on the backs of working people.”

New York State has a budget deficit of around $14 billion, and the City has a $4-5 billion hole to fill. While the state is poised to receive more than $24 billion in stimulus funds, the governor has argued that New York has a “spending problem” and that the funds will not cover future deficits. He has proposed regressive sales taxes and $2.5 billion in education and $3.5 billion in healthcare cuts, gradually ending aid to all cultural institutions, and huge cuts to libraries, among other things.

NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg, for his part, has echoed the governor’s rhetoric, and proposed similar cuts at the city level. While Paterson has been pushed to retreat—due in large part to public outrage and actions such as the Rally for New York—Bloomberg won’t budge. He has proposed $127 million in cuts to the city’s medical institutions and nearly $1 billion in cuts to city schools. Bloomberg has also demanded another tier be added to the contracts of public workers.

United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten told the crowd in NYC, “As President Obama has said over and over, we cannot simply cut our way out of this economic crisis because that would be a recipe for disaster. That is why we pushed so hard for passage of the stimulus package.”

Weingarten is also president of the American Federation of Teachers, the national parent union of UFT.

In a show of solidarity, the rally demanded no cuts to anything: the Untied Federation of Teachers demanded no cuts to healthcare, while 1199 SEIU, which represents healthcare workers demanded no cuts to education, for example. Instead, everyone demanded Fair Share Tax Reform, in which the wealthiest New Yorkers would pay slightly more in taxes.

Currently, New York’s highest marginal tax rate is 6.85 percent, whether you make $40,000 or $40,000,000. The plan would add a few new brackets, and would raise $6 billion. However, Bloomberg, and others of his ilk, argue that the rich would not pay, and would simply move out—though New Jersey and California have similar tax brackets, and, as 1199 SEIU President George Gresham said, “there are a lot of rich people there.”

Gresham noted that “study after study” have shown that the rich do not move when their income tax is raised. Further, “this is New York,” he told the cheering crowd. “Where are they going to move? To Iowa?”

According to Thompson, “all New Yorkers must play a part in bringing New York back.”

A huge cross-section of the city’s unions were represented, including the teachers, SEIU Local 32 BJ, AFSCME, most AFL-CIO unions. Many community and civic groups, like Citizen Action, Make the Road New York, ACORN, the city's immigration coalition, tenants' organizations, and others, were also out in force.