History > 2012 > USA > Politics >

Towns, counties, cities (I)

414 Homicides in ’12

Is a Record Low for New York City

December 28, 2012
The New York Times
By WENDY RUDERMAN

Murders in New York have dropped to their lowest level in over 40 years, city officials announced on Friday, even as overall crimes increased slightly because of a rise in thefts — a phenomenon based solely on robberies of iPhones and other Apple devices.

There were 414 recorded homicides so far in 2012, compared with 515 for the same period in 2011, city officials said. That is a striking decline from murder totals in the low-2,000s that were common in the early 1990s, and is also below the record low: 471, set in 2009.

“The essence of civilization is that you can walk down the street without having to look over your shoulder,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said.

Mr. Bloomberg acclaimed the accomplishment during a graduation ceremony for more than 1,000 new police officers at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. He attributed the low murder rate to the department’s controversial practice of “stop, question and frisk,” in which people are stopped on the street and questioned by officers, and aggressive hot-spot policing, in which officers are deployed to areas with crime spikes. Shootings are also down for the year so far. The number of murders is the lowest since 1963, when improvements in the recording of data were made.

The Police Department said thefts of Apple products had risen by 3,890, which was more than the overall increase in “major crimes.”

In the last two decades, trumpeting declines in crime trends has become an annual end-of-the-year event, even when the numbers inched up.

But figures alone do not tell the whole story, and several homicides this year stood out as particularly disturbing, given the age of the victims and the manner of death. Detectives described the stabbing deaths of two children at the hands of their nanny inside the bathroom of their Manhattan apartment in October as among the most horrific crimes they could recall.

“I think those images get embedded in the minds of detectives more than other crime scenes,” said Michael Palladino, president of the Detectives’ Endowment Association, the union that represents detectives, adding, “It certainly makes you rethink the things that you take for granted, which is the safety of children.”

So far this year, the police said, 20 children — ages 9 and younger — were murdered, up from 16 in 2011. Among the victims was a 4-year-old boy, Lloyd Morgan Jr., who was shot in the head on a Bronx playground during a basketball tournament.

There were also several anomalies in the 2012 homicide tally, including a serial killer who murdered three shopkeepers in Brooklyn.

Perhaps the most well-known murder put on the books in 2012 actually may have occurred in 1979. That is when Etan Patz, a 6-year-old boy, disappeared as he walked to a bus stop in SoHo. For more than three decades, Etan was officially listed as “missing.” When an arrest was made this year and the suspect, Pedro Hernandez, was charged with murder, the haunting crime was added to the 2012 homicide tally.

This has been a leap year. And indeed, on Feb. 29, a Bronx teenager was fatally stabbed.

In one of several recent high-profile killings, a man was shot outside the Empire State Building by an ex-colleague.

But overall killings have dropped to such a low level that more New Yorkers now commit suicide than are the victims of homicides. About 475 New Yorkers kill themselves each year, according to the city’s health department.

Mr. Bloomberg praised Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, saying the 19 percent drop in homicides compared with 2011 was achieved despite a shrinking police force and an increasing population. Mr. Kelly said he believed that relatively new policing strategies, including adding more police officers dedicated to curbing domestic violence, and monitoring social media to thwart gang-related murders, were working.

“We’re preventing crimes before someone is killed and before someone else has to go to prison,” the commissioner said.

Six precincts recorded no murders as of Friday afternoon: The 7th on the Lower East Side; the 19th on the Upper East Side; the 112th in the Forest Hills and Rego Park neighborhoods of Queens; the 94th in Greenpoint, Brooklyn; the 76th in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn; and Central Park, according to the police.

Of the 414 murders, 14 deaths from previous years were counted as homicides for the first time, like in the Patz case. In many of these cases, victims of long-ago shootings died of sepsis in hospitals, the police said.

Of the 400 murders in 2012, 223 were gunshot victims, 84 victims were stabbed to death, 43 died of blunt trauma and 11 died of asphyxiation. The majority of the 400 homicides occurred on a Saturday, followed by early Sunday morning. Most occurred at 2 a.m. People were more likely to be killed outside than in. Nearly 70 percent of the victims had prior criminal arrests, the police said.

Domestic-related homicides dropped to 68, from 94 in 2011.

The likelihood of being killed by a stranger was slight. The vast majority of the homicides, Mr. Kelly said, grew out of “disputes” between a victim and killer who knew each other.

The series of Apple-product thefts has been challenging the police for several years, but this is the first time they have been seen as significantly skewing the crime statistics. “If you just took away the jump in Apple, we’d be down for the year,” Mr. Bloomberg’s press secretary, Marc La Vorgna, said.

Mr. Kelly said the thefts of non-Apple devices had declined.

Michael M. Grynbaum contributed reporting.

    414 Homicides in ’12 Is a Record Low for New York City, NYT, 28.12.2012,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/29/nyregion/414-homicides-is-a-record-low-for-new-york.html

A Bleak Procession of Funerals for Shooting Victims

Ends in Newtown

December 22, 2012
The New York Times
By MARC SANTORA

NEWTOWN, Conn. — This community laid to rest on Saturday the last of the children killed in a schoolhouse massacre.

In a town devastated by violence, besieged by worldwide attention from the news media and struggling to move forward, the burial of Josephine Grace Gay, 7, brought to an end a bleak procession of funerals that began not long after Adam Lanza killed 20 children and 6 staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

“This has been a challenge for us,” Msgr. Robert E. Weiss said during his homily at Josephine’s funeral Mass at St. Rose of Lima Roman Catholic Church.

Funeral after funeral, wake after wake, he said, it had been faith, family and friendship that held the community together.

He recalled the terrible hours after the shooting stopped on Dec. 14, when he waited with families at the firehouse near the school, with parents clinging to the hope that their children had made it out unharmed.

At 3 p.m. that day, he said, Josephine’s parents were told that she had not survived.

“It does not make sense,” Monsignor Weiss said, adding that the children did not die in vain. “If these 20 cannot change the world, then no one can,” he said.

He added that it was now up to everyone to bring out the best in themselves and one another.

“You should be angry,” Monsignor Weiss said. “But don’t hold onto it.”

The shootings have resonated around the world, and have set off an intense national discussion on gun control, mental health and other issues.

That discussion continues, yet the focus here Saturday was not on questions of policy or new laws. It was on a first grader known to family and friends as Joey, who had turned 7 days before she was killed.

Her father, Bob Gay, noted that though she had autism and was unable to speak, “you don’t need words to say, ‘I love you.’ ”

Mr. Gay and Josephine’s mother, Michele Gay, shared with the congregation some of the “life lessons” they learned from their daughter.

“You can’t really appreciate a movie until you have watched it 300 times,” Ms. Gay said, before mentioning another lesson: “iPhones are not waterproof.”

Josephine’s father said that she had taught him not to “sweat the small stuff; it’s all small stuff.” And this: “Even the smallest of us can do great things.”

In a town that was plunged into unimaginable shock and sorrow a little more than a week before, there seemed to be a determination at the funeral to be upbeat. Many people wore purple, Josephine’s favorite color.

There were two other funerals for children killed at Sandy Hook on Saturday, both held outside of Newtown.

Ana Marquez-Greene, 6, was mourned at a private ceremony in Bloomfield, Conn. She was the daughter of the jazz saxophonist Jimmy Greene, who posted a short tribute to his daughter on his Facebook page.

“As much as she is needed here and missed by her mother, her brother and me, Ana beat us all to paradise,” he wrote the day after the shootings. “I love you, sweetie girl.”

Her mother, Nelba Marquez-Greene, in a statement, recalled her budding musical talent.

“In a musical family, her gift for melody, pitch and rhythm stood out remarkably,” she said.

In Ogden, Utah, Robbie and Alyssa Parker buried their 6-year-old daughter, Emilie.

Mr. Parker was one of the first parents of a child killed at the school to speak out publicly, at an emotional news conference one week ago.

Choking back tears, he vowed not to let what happened “turn into something that defines us, but something that inspires us to be better, to be more compassionate and more humble people.”

Those sentiments were echoed in the notes and posters left at memorials across Newtown.

The piles of stuffed animals and flowers and toys have grown each day, but there was a hope that with the final funeral, the people here could begin to grieve outside of the constant glare of media attention.

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, who had ordered all flags in the state to be flown at half-staff after the massacre, said it was time to raise them once again.

    A Bleak Procession of Funerals for Shooting Victims Ends in Newtown, NYT, 22.12.2012,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/23/nyregion/newtown-mourns-last-of-its-children-killed-in-massacre.html

Media Spotlight Seen as a Blessing, or a Curse,

in a Grieving Town

December 16, 2012
The New York Times
By PETER APPLEBOME and BRIAN STELTER

NEWTOWN, Conn. — Wolf Blitzer understands that his presence here is not appreciated by some local people, who wish that the TV satellite trucks, and the reporters who have taken over the local Starbucks, would go away and leave them to ache, grieve and mourn in peace.

But he also knows that the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School ranks with the national tragedies he has covered: Oklahoma City, Sept. 11, Virginia Tech. So for now the most intimate and heartbreaking of catastrophes and the insatiable, unwieldy beast of global news media are locked in an awkward union in a bucolic New England town that never expected to encounter either.

Mr. Blitzer, the longtime CNN anchor, said the few exhortations to go home he had heard while working here had been far outnumbered by comments from people who thank him for telling Newtown’s story sensitively and who want the world to know what happened here. Still, he said, Newtown is providing a particularly vivid laboratory of how the media report this kind of tragedy.

“If you have people bringing dolls or flowers to makeshift memorials and they’re crying, that’s a powerful image, it’s part of this story, it’s part of our history right now, and we have to deal with it,” he said on Sunday.

This town, of course, has been transformed by unimaginable tragedy. But in a more mundane and presumably transitory way, Newtown and particularly the small community of Sandy Hook have also been transformed by those coming to report on it, a news media presence that has clogged quiet roads, established glowing encampments of lights and cameras, and showed up in force at church services and public memorials.

Nearly every newscast on CNN since Friday night has been broadcast from Newtown. The same has been true for nearly every network television morning and evening newscast. Coverage of other events has been minimized if not scrapped entirely, at least for a few days — sometimes with breathlessly inaccurate results about the massacre. On Friday, there was a succession of reports about the shooting and the gunman that turned out to be wrong: reports about the gunman’s name, about his mother’s occupation, about how he got into the building.

The confusion continued into Saturday when NBC broadcast an exclusive report that the gunman had an altercation with four staff members at the school the day before the shootings, according to state and federal officials. A revised account played down the possibility of an altercation.

Reporters like NBC News’s justice correspondent, Pete Williams, tried to be transparent about the fact that many initial details about the shooting came from anonymous and occasionally contradictory sources.

When Adam Lanza’s brother Ryan’s name circulated widely as the gunman’s name on Friday afternoon, he said “we are being told the name Ryan,” but cautioned that “at the end of the day that name might be wrong.”

Despite the errors, Al Tompkins, a senior faculty member at the Poynter Institute, the nonprofit journalism organization, said he was “touched and impressed by the nonstop coverage so far.” He said he had not seen any children interviewed without a parent nearby.

Some news organizations said they had specific rules about such interviews. A spokeswoman for CBS News said that its policy “is not to interview children under the age of 18 before getting permission from a parent.”

While police officials have asked — at times almost begged — the news media to respect the privacy of families that have lost a loved one, reporters and bookers do have to ask. Thus the sight of big-name anchors going door to door this weekend, seeking interviews. They said they know when no means no.

“We are always extremely sensitive to the feelings and the wishes of loved ones,” said Tom Cibrowski, the executive producer of ABC’s “Good Morning America.” But, he added, “There is a time when some do choose to honor their child or the victim, and we can provide a forum.”

Most moving, perhaps, was the eloquent tribute that Robbie Parker paid Saturday in front of TV cameras to his dead 6-year-old daughter, Emilie Alice. Nonetheless, in Newtown, a police officer has been assigned to keep unwelcome visitors away at the homes of the families of each of the dead children.

Some here have had gripes about individual reporters pushing cameras and microphones into the faces of unwilling residents, particularly those leaving the firehouse in grief on Friday after receiving news about what happened at the school.

Still, Michael Burton, the second assistant chief at the firehouse, who said he witnessed some intrusive reporters, also said the coverage has been a blessing beyond sharing the town’s grief.

A fire department in Texas, learning of the Christmas tree sale at his firehouse, bought the two trees that became the center of a memorial at the bridge leading up to the school. Someone in North Carolina bought another 26, one for each of the slain children and school personnel, all now adorned in a green tribute leading up to the school.

“If not for the media coverage, none of that would have happened,” he said.

On Sunday morning, Eric Mueller, an art teacher at a private school in New Haven, began hammering 27 wooden angels that he and eight friends had constructed into the ground in front of his house in Newtown. Within minutes, he was joined by more than a dozen reporters and photographers. “My wife said, ‘Whatever you do, don’t talk to the press,’ ” he said.

He said his gesture was for the residents of Newtown, not for the world. But he said he had no problem with the news media descending on the town.

“I’m fine with it right now. I’ll go back in the house and be done with it and let the angels speak for themselves.”

Peter Applebome reported from Newtown, Conn., and Brian Stelter from New York.

    Media Spotlight Seen as a Blessing, or a Curse, in a Grieving Town, NYT, 16.12.2012,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/17/business/media/
    newtown-has-mixed-feelings-about-the-media-horde-in-its-midst.html

In a Town of Traditions, Grief Engulfs Holiday Joy

December 15, 2012
The New York Times
By JIM DWYER and EMILY S. RUEB

NEWTOWN, Conn. — The phone rang just after 10 on Saturday morning in an old farmhouse along Walnut Tree Hill Road. Julia Wasserman had been undecided about even going to the farm, which she and her husband bought decades ago, and where people still come to cut their own Christmas trees. She answered.

Yes, she said, the farm was open.

After she was finished, Ms. Wasserman shrugged her shoulders. “I wasn’t even going to come today,” she said. “I didn’t know what the right thing to do was. I still don’t know. But the man said he wanted to come, to bring his kids out. That they needed it.”

People everywhere in Newtown — a classic New England small town — struggled with whether, and how, to go on with something that seemed like normal life. Even as Ms. Wasserman tended to the tree farm, the State Police gathered at a park across town to brief reporters from around the world on the latest grim details of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

As much as anyplace, Newtown digs into its public rituals, celebrating Fourth of July and Labor Day and Halloween with gatherings in the tiny downtown. Earlier this month, the lighting of the grand Christmas tree seemed to bring out nearly every person under age 12 for miles around. The roads were lined with lighted candles in paper bags.

“With Christmas-tree shapes cut into the bags,” Lenie Urbina, 9, noted.

On Saturday, on a pole beside the village Christmas tree, there were messages from before and after the horror. A season of celebration had halted, almost instantly, and there was no instruction book on how to handle that moment. Everyone and everything was raw to the touch, even the glance. “Our hearts are with you,” read one sign, cut in the shape of a heart and pasted at the structure’s base.

Birgitta Cole, in a white ski jacket, walked her Yorkie. “Christmas is so big here, and now people don’t know what to do,” Ms. Cole said. “Everyone decorates their house and puts up lights. Last night we were thinking: Should we turn on the lights? Is that the right thing to do? Finally we decided to do it. Life is for the living. But it’s so hard to know what to do.”

It was not simply a question of rescheduling a ritual, a party or a gathering; these celebrations, from all the faiths and from none, push back against the dominance of the long winter night. No one is more essential to them than humans between, say, ages 5 and 9, who are balanced between the world of reason and the world of magic.

“All of these babies,” Jennifer Zulli, mother of a 5-year-old daughter, said. “We need to find peace for them, for the whole world.”

Ms. Zulli runs a meditation and healing space in Sound Center for Arts, the old Hawleyville Chapel that she and her husband restored. The grand opening, with family songs, had been scheduled for Saturday morning. The signs announcing the opening lay on the floor in the vestibule.

“I canceled, of course, but I can’t not open the doors,” she said. “We want to be a place for healing.”

A friend arrived and fell, weeping, into Ms. Zulli’s arms. “It’s never going to be the same,” the friend said.

The Toy Tree, a shop on Church Hill Road, opened as usual on Saturday morning. Pink Santa ornaments were on display, along with a “Star Wars” Lego set, a stuffed penguin and polyester bootees — “kids sizes 9-10.”

Behind the counter, a computer screen carried a live feed of the shooting coverage, with images of cameramen huddled a short distance from the shop’s doors. Around 9:45 a.m., a woman entered, asking if the shop carried snow globes. No, she was told, as the shopkeeper knelt distractedly near a small chalkboard. Sorry.

Moments later, the proprietor etched a message on the board, in neat handwriting and yellow chalk. “Our love, thoughts and prayers are with our community,” she wrote. She nodded, and the sign was placed outside.

Newtown, incorporated in 1711, takes its child-friendly, Norman Rockwell ambience seriously. The all-purpose landmark is the downtown flagpole, which dates to 1876. Fat and packed with small-town ephemera, including weekly equestrian news, The Newtown Bee dates to 1877. Scrabble was developed in Newtown by a local lawyer, James Brunot, in 1948, who adapted an earlier version and changed its name from “Criss-Cross Words” to “Scrabble.”

Late Friday evening, the Blue Colony Diner, just off Route 84, was still busy. It is a classic, with a menu the size of an encyclopedia and desserts lighted in a refrigerated display case. Heaped along the ceilings, like drifts of snow, were white Christmas lights. A fat Santa figure stood in a stack of bread, holding a chalked sign that read: “Challah Bread, $3.95.”

“They’ve already started putting things on the door,” the man behind the cash register said to the manager.

The manager stepped out to look at them.

People had turned over place mats and made crayon drawings on the backs: a purple angel, hovering over words written in green, “RIP Children & Adults of Newtown.” They were taped to the entryway window.

The manager came back inside. “Leave them there,” he said.

“Oh yeah,” the cashier said.

The manager spoke again, his voice flat: “We have to leave them.”

A decade ago, Ms. Wasserman gave 100 of her trees to the Sandy Hook fire department, propelling an annual fund-raiser.

Now the fire department runs one of the largest tree-selling operations in the vicinity. Last week, Ms. Zulli and her family drove home from the firehouse with their tree.

On Friday, beneath a big wreath hung from its cupola, the firehouse became a refuge for evacuated children; for parents, it was a vestibule between reunion or loss.

By Saturday, the remainder of this year’s trees were heaped in their ranks, six-foot balsams, seven-foot firs, the piles untouched, all promise of celebration vanished. Escorted by the police, a car rolled past the trees in the brilliant afternoon sunshine. On the door was the decal of a funeral home chain.

 

Peter Applebome and Matt Flegenheimer contributed reporting.

    In a Town of Traditions, Grief Engulfs Holiday Joy, NYT, 15.12.2012,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/nyregion/for-newtown-horror-halts-a-season-of-celebration.html

Mayoral Race With a Rarity: No Top Hopeful Who Is Jewish

November 25, 2012
The New York Times
By SAM ROBERTS

Where are the Jews?

As mayoral election season starts to heat up in a city that has started memorable Jewish political careers like Edward I. Koch’s and Bella S. Abzug’s, one thing seems to be missing: a major Jewish candidate.

In the world of politics, the idea of a New York City mayoral race without a serious Jewish entrant is hard to fathom. It would be “like the Upper West Side without Zabar’s,” said Robert Shrum, a longtime Democratic political strategist, or “a rye bread without seeds,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a Democratic political consultant.

But when the Manhattan borough president, Scott M. Stringer, who was preparing to run for mayor, surprised many by deciding instead to run for comptroller, he did more than upend the dynamics of the race.

He carved a notch in the history books.

Though the field is still in flux, 2013 is poised to be the first time in more than a half-century that two successive Democratic mayoral candidates will be nominated without a Jewish challenger in contention. It would also be even longer since a mayoral race without an incumbent did not have a major Jewish candidate as part of the field.

In the 11 elections since a Jewish candidate, Abraham D. Beame, first won a Democratic mayoral primary in 1965, Jewish Democrats (Mr. Beame, Mr. Koch, Ruth W. Messinger and Mark Green) won the nomination six times. Jewish candidates were elected mayor seven times (Mr. Beame, Mr. Koch and Michael R. Bloomberg).

The last time no Jewish candidate of either party sought the nomination was in 1993, when David N. Dinkins ran for re-election and lost to Rudolph W. Giuliani. In 2001, when Mr. Green was facing Mr. Bloomberg, both major candidates were Jewish.

The likelihood that no major Jewish candidate may seek to run for mayor is also the consequence of the extraordinary undoing of the political career of a man who could very well have been the Democratic front-runner at this point: Anthony D. Weiner. Mr. Weiner, a former United States representative from New York City, resigned in 2011 after a sexual text-messaging scandal derailed his aspirations.

But the prospect of no major Jewish candidate is not just a product of political events. It also reflects the city’s shifting demographics and a splintered electorate that comprises mostly smaller blocs often aligned by geography, class and ideology rather than by religion, ethnicity and race, political analysts say.

And it represents the dwindling proportion of the citywide primary electorate comprising Jewish voters — to perhaps 20 percent, from twice that in the 1950s and 1960s.

Mr. Stringer’s withdrawal winnowed the most likely major aspirants in the Democratic mayoral primary to Bill de Blasio, the public advocate, who is of German and Italian extraction; John C. Liu, the comptroller, who was born in Taiwan; Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker, who is of Irish descent; and William C. Thompson Jr., a former comptroller who is black.

Some candidates are hardly oblivious to the precedents their election would set for the city: Ms. Quinn would become the first female and the first openly gay mayor; Mr. Liu would be the first Asian mayor.

On the Republican side, Adolfo Carrión Jr., a former Bronx borough president, is mulling a race for the party’s nomination. He would be the first Latino to be elected. (Tom Allon, the president of Manhattan Media who is backed by the formerly pivotal Liberal Party, is Jewish and is seeking the Republican nomination this year, but he has struggled to raise money and is widely considered a long shot.)

“Identity politics is still very much a fabric of New York City political life, as seen in the likely field of candidates, both Democratic and Republican, who are prepared to toss their hats into the ring,” said Lee M. Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion.

In other words, in an evolving way, the “Beyond the Melting Pot” political calculus that Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Nathan Glazer articulated a half-century ago is still evident.

“Ethnic groups will tend to vote disproportionately for someone seen like ‘one of them,’ ” said Mr. Glazer, a professor emeritus of sociology at Harvard, “and that is still a factor in elections, not so much for citywide, but for Council and state representatives.”

Among Jews, one reliable voting bloc is the Hasidic community, which can be counted on to deliver near-unanimous support in local races.

The so-called balanced ticket, on which candidates were chosen to galvanize their singular constituencies — typically Irish, Italian and Jewish voters — has been in decline since 1961.

Divisive primaries have proliferated since then, as has the doctrine of every man for himself. Party bosses lost their power to forge and effect alliances. In 1993, Mr. Giuliani pieced together an ethnically balanced ticket of Susan D. Alter, a Jewish Democrat who ran for public advocate, and Herman Badillo, a Hispanic Democrat who ran for comptroller. Mr. Giuliani won. Both his running mates lost.

Howard Wolfson, a deputy mayor to Mr. Bloomberg and a political strategist, said relatively anemic turnout by black voters for C. Virginia Fields in the 2005 Democratic primary and by Hispanic voters for Fernando Ferrer, the Democratic nominee, proved that “race and religion, while important, were no longer going to be predictive of electoral outcomes.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 25, 2012

An earlier version of this article misstated the year in which Rudolph W. Giuliani

formed a ticket with Susan D. Alter and Herman Badillo. It was 1993, not 1997.

    Mayoral Race With a Rarity: No Top Hopeful Who Is Jewish, NYT, 25.11.2012,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/26/nyregion/
    with-no-major-jewish-candidate-an-unusual-absence-in-the-nyc-mayors-race.html

San Francisco Officials Approve a Ban on Public Nudity

November 20, 2012
The New York Times
By MALIA WOLLAN

SAN FRANCISCO — The command from city officials to residents was simple: Put your clothes back on.

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted 6 to 5 on Tuesday to approve a ban on public nudity. The vote means that there will be no more lounging nude in the city’s plazas, parading up and down city streets sans pants or riding subways and buses bare-bottomed.

Scott Wiener, a city supervisor who represents the Castro district, introduced the ordinance after an increase in the number of habitual nudists and a rise in complaints from residents and business owners.

“The nudity situation in the Castro has become extreme,” Mr. Wiener told his colleagues.

After city supervisors approved the ban, the crowd at City Hall erupted in loud heckling and booing.

“Recall Wiener! Wiener is a Republican!” shouted Gerhart Clarke, 55, who stood up along with half a dozen others and stripped down to the buff.

“Shame on you!” another woman yelled, pulling off her shirt. “What are you afraid of?”

Anticipating the nude protesters, sheriff’s deputies draped them in blue blankets and led them out of the meeting hall.

Under the new ordinance, public nudity will be subject to a series of fines. A first-time violation would result in a fine of up to $100. A second citation in the same year would cost up to $200, and a third would result in a fine of up to $500 or a misdemeanor and up to one year in jail.

On most sunny or even moderately warm days here, a handful of naturalists (known locally as “the naked guys”) can be found reading newspapers or stalking around the Castro district’s Jane Werner Plaza looking like an out-of-place flock of pale and ungainly birds.

The law will not go into effect until after Feb. 1, which will allow enough time for a federal judge to consider a lawsuit brought against the city by a group of nudists who claim that the ordinance infringes on their constitutional right to free speech.

As long as it is not lewd or offensive, public nudity is legal under state law. But on Tuesday, San Francisco joined many other cities that prohibit it, including nearby San Jose and Berkeley.

This is a city that prides itself on its inclusivity and diversity and, in that vein, the ordinance does allow for some exceptions.

Preschoolers can still go bare, women can still go topless and public nudity will continue to be allowed at events permitted by the city, including the annual gay pride parade and the Folsom Street Fair, a street party billed as the largest leather and fetish event in the world.

Several supervisors adamantly opposed the ban.

“I cannot and will not bite this apple,” John Avalos said before voting against the measure. “I refuse to put on this fig leaf.”

    San Francisco Officials Approve a Ban on Public Nudity, NYT, 20.11.2012,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/21/us/san-francisco-officials-vote-to-ban-public-nudity.html

Mayor Bloomberg’s Blind Spot

November 5, 2012
The New York Times
By JOE NOCERA

I was headed out of town on Sunday morning when I spotted the runners. They were wearing the kind of lightweight running gear that marks a serious marathoner. Some were even wearing bib numbers. They were running north on Eighth Avenue toward Columbus Circle, which is where the marathoners normally enter Central Park, on the first Sunday of November, for the home stretch of the New York City Marathon.

But, of course, there was no New York City Marathon on Sunday. Late on Friday, the city canceled it after mounting public pressure. More precisely, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who had insisted right up until Friday afternoon that the race would go on — and who likes to think of himself as being impervious to public pressure — finally caved.

Most other mayors, faced with a loud public outcry, would have canceled it much earlier. I live with a marathoner, and, by Wednesday, I could see how upset she and her friends in the running community were over Bloomberg’s insistence that the show go on. One friend, Jimmy Smyth, who has run in 23 consecutive New York City Marathons, told me that holding the 2012 marathon would “permanently damage the legacy of both the marathon and Mayor Bloomberg.”

On Friday morning, The New York Post published a photograph on its cover showing a security guard in Central Park protecting two generators reserved for the marathon. Residents of Staten Island, which had been so heavily damaged, were furious at the thought that 47,000 runners were going to arrive in their battered borough — la di da — to start the race.

But Bloomberg is a stubborn man, who tends to think that he knows what’s best for us. He is also a businessman who views problems through the prism of business. Running the marathon, he said, would show that the city was back up and running. It was a linchpin of tourism. Bloomberg even mentioned the tax revenue the city would generate as a result of the marathon. When he was finally forced to back down, he sent his deputy mayor, Howard Wolfson, to the press conference. Eating crow has never been one of the mayor’s strong suits.

I’m of the view that Bloomberg has been a very good mayor, maybe one of the greatest in New York’s history. He has made city government more data-driven and more efficient. He has championed causes, like gun control, that most other politicians run away from. His long-term strategic planning has made a huge difference in the life of the city. As I mentioned in my last column, his foresight in realizing the city needed an updated evacuation plan undoubtedly saved hundreds of lives during Hurricane Sandy.

A pragmatic, apolitical, solution-oriented centrist, Bloomberg is now trying to nurture a new generation of politicians who will follow his lead. He has used some of his enormous wealth, for instance, to contribute to several campaigns of centrist members of Congress facing more extreme opponents. Until his recent endorsement of President Obama, he had been largely dismissive of the presidential campaign, precisely because neither candidate was offering what he viewed as pragmatic solutions to the country’s problems. He has spent a great deal of time advising other mayors — even setting up a competition among cities through his foundation. The winner will receive $5 million to pursue innovative ideas for running cities.

But what Bloomberg’s third term — a term, let’s recall, that required the extension of term limits — also illustrates is that sometimes, politicians have to be, well, political. Flying in the face of smart politics, Bloomberg appointed a school superintendent who had never spent a day in her life in school administration. He was compelled to let her go three months later. When one of his deputies was forced to resign because of a domestic violence arrest, Bloomberg tried to keep the news quiet. The kind of empathy that has practically oozed from New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, in the aftermath of Sandy is anathema to Bloomberg. The mayor’s refusal to cancel the marathon until the last second is hardly the most pressing decision he’s made. But it is emblematic of his one big blind spot.

As it turns out, there weren’t just a few dozen runners who came into the park on Sunday. There were thousands. I parked my car and walked into Central Park to get a better view. Spectators were sitting in the stands, cheering the runners, who were waving and smiling back. I took my place with them, and started clapping my hands. It was one of the most joyous, awe-inspiring things I have ever seen in this city, cathartic in a way that the real marathon could never have been. Not this year anyway.

A politician could have — should have — owned that moment. That will never describe Bloomberg.

    Mayor Bloomberg’s Blind Spot, NYT, 5.11.2012,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/06/opinion/nocera-mayor-bloombergs-blind-spot.html

California City Savors Role in Fighting ‘Big Soda’

November 4, 2012
The New York Times
By NORIMITSU ONISHI

RICHMOND, Calif. — This small, blue-collar city best known for its Chevron refinery has become the unlikely vanguard for anticorporate, left-wing activism in recent years, having seized the mantle from places like Berkeley, just south of here, or San Francisco, across the Bay.

It became the largest American city to be led by a Green Party mayor, who was re-elected two years ago even though the oil giant bankrolled rival efforts with $1.2 million. Social activists belonging to the Richmond Progressive Alliance gained control of the City Council, from where they have been taking on what they refer to as the “Chevron Man.”

But this election season, city leaders are fighting on two fronts, against not only Big Oil but also Big Soda, as they like to call their foes. If voters here approve a proposal on Tuesday’s ballot, Richmond will become the first city in the United States to add a tax on businesses that sell soda and other sweetened drinks, although many states already collect taxes on such drinks directly as part of anti-obesity efforts.

Fierce campaigning has brought in the kind of money rarely seen in a community of 104,000 people. Soda companies have funneled $2.5 million into efforts to defeat the tax, or Measure N, while supporters have raised only $69,000.

In its continuing fight, Chevron has again spent $1.2 million, this time to oppose two City Council candidates who are critical of the company and to support three who are considered supportive. An otherwise dilapidated downtown is blanketed with signs and billboards attacking the soda tax and backing candidates favored by the beverage industry and Chevron.

“We’ve been taking on Chevron for so many years, and now we’re taking on Big Soda as well, because we know that corporate entities are buying elections and unduly influencing cities and our nation,” Mayor Gayle McLaughlin said in an interview in her City Hall office. “We’re trying to show the Richmond community that we don’t have to sit back and let them take control of our lives. We can stand up to them.”

Richmond, though, is not united. The two-pronged battle has sharpened the differences between the Richmond Progressive Alliance and leaders of the city’s growing Hispanic population and the once-dominant black establishment. Many in those groups oppose the soda tax and side with Chevron.

The mayor blames the rift on the money from the oil and soda industries. Black and Hispanic leaders say the alliance, whose most prominent leaders are white, failed to reach out to them before moving ahead on a tax that would disproportionately affect small businesses and consumers in their communities. Supporters have said that the tax would combat child obesity, which is highest among black children in Richmond, according to a local study.

“They’re using the black community to pass a measure for us without consulting us,” said Nathaniel Bates, a veteran councilman whose campaign for re-election has received $157,000 from Moving Forward, a coalition that is heavily financed by Chevron. “We’re tired of this Progressive Alliance coming in and telling us what to do. I’ve renamed them Plantation Alliance.”

Supporters of the measure, which would impose a 1-cent-per-ounce tax on sweetened beverages, argue that the new revenue would be used to fight childhood obesity in a city where the poverty rate is higher than the state average and where more than half of elementary school students are considered overweight or obese, according to the study, commissioned by the Richmond City Council.

Chuck Finnie, a spokesman for a committee working against Measure N, which is being financed by the American Beverage Association, said the association spent $2.5 million because the local measure is part of a growing national debate over soda.

“There’s basically a handful of advocacy organizations who are trying to convince the country that soda companies should be treated like tobacco companies,” Mr. Finnie said. “But when we organize a local campaign against the measure — granted with funding from Coca-Cola, Pepsi and Dr Pepper — folks in Richmond can make up their minds themselves.”

Jeff Ritterman, the councilman who led the drive for the soda tax measure, said the beverage industry was simply trying to buy votes.

“We have a legitimate, grass-roots community movement that cares about Richmond and wants to change it,” said Mr. Ritterman, who is also a cardiologist. “They have an AstroTurf-funded movement.”

Complicating matters, a fire broke out at Chevron’s refinery in August, spewing smoke into the air and sending thousands to emergency rooms. The Richmond Progressive Alliance renewed demands that Chevron fully modernize its 110-year-old refinery; Ms. McLaughlin said the city and Chevron were negotiating compensation for the fire, adding that the goal was to “make sure Chevron pays the highest amount we can get from them.”

Heather Kulp, a spokeswoman for Chevron, Richmond’s biggest employer, said that there was “no direct conversation” about compensation between the company and the city. Explaining Chevron’s $1.2 million role in the City Council races, Ms. Kulp said: “We think that it’s important for voters to have the information about all the candidates running for office so that they can elect the City Council members that are best suited to helping push Richmond further into the future.”

Gary Bell, a City Council candidate Moving Forward has supported with $103,000, criticized the Richmond Progressive Alliance.

“Unless they’re telling people Chevron should just shut down and go away, the alternative is to find a way to work with them where it’s a win-win situation,” Mr. Bell said.

A former councilman, Mr. Bell ran for mayor in 2006 and split the black and pro-business votes with Irma Anderson, the incumbent. That handed a narrow victory to Ms. McLaughlin.

The victory also reflected the changing demographics of a longtime moderate Democratic city. The black population has continued to decline; though Hispanics now make up the biggest ethnic group, they remain underrepresented among voters. Many newcomers drawn to Richmond’s affordable rents have come from Berkeley and brought along their politics.

“You do see the kinds of issues here that used to be brought up in Berkeley, international affairs and ideological issues, as opposed to the bread-and-butter issues that used to dominate Richmond,” said Eric Zell, a local political consultant who has worked for the city and Chevron.

Ms. McLaughlin spoke of using Richmond politics to connect with international movements, including those in developing nations where Western oil companies extract crude.

“One of our slogans at rallies has been: From Richmond to Ecuador to Burma to Nigeria, we are in solidarity, and the oil industry needs to be held accountable,” the mayor said.

At home, the city government declared last summer that pet owners would now be called pet “guardians.” Richmond allows homeless people to sit or sleep on the streets even as places like San Francisco have taken a harder stance in recent years.

On Tuesday, voters in Berkeley will consider a proposition that would ban sitting or lying on commercial sidewalks. To Ms. McLaughlin, who said Berkeley’s rich history of political activism inspired her when she was young, that made it even more important for Richmond to press ahead.

“It’s not good to just have one city” known for its political activism, the mayor said, “and certainly not a city that’s sliding backward like Berkeley.”

    California City Savors Role in Fighting ‘Big Soda’, NYT, 4.11.2012,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/05/us/richmond-calif-savors-role-as-soda-tax-battleground.html

Population Growth in New York City

Is Outpacing 2010 Census, 2011 Estimates Show

April 5, 2012
The New York Times
By SAM ROBERTS

New York City gained nearly 70,000 residents in the 15 months ended July 1, 2011, almost matching the growth of the 1990s, when an influx of foreigners set annual records, according to census estimates released on Wednesday.

The apparent population rebound resulted from a combination of continued immigration and higher birthrates among the newcomers, along with fewer New Yorkers leaving the city.

The estimates also appeared to indicate faster growth than had been suggested by the 2010 census, which recorded gains of only 175,000 for the entire decade and a decline from 2009 population estimates. City officials insisted that the 2010 figures undercounted about 50,000 people in Brooklyn and Queens, but their challenge was rejected last week.

“We are pleased that the Census Bureau has begun to recognize this growth, but we continue to believe the real population is over 8.3 million based on our demographers’ scientific work and the historic track record of undercount among hard-to-enumerate populations in big cities,” said Joseph J. Salvo, director of the population division in the city’s Planning Department.

In the estimates by the Census Bureau for July 1, 2011, the biggest gains were recorded in Brooklyn and Queens. Brooklyn had gained nearly 28,000 people since April 1, 2010, and Queens had gained more than 17,000.

Those gains, combined with increases in every other borough, boosted the city’s population by 69,777, to 8,244,910.

Even the population of the Bronx grew at a faster rate than did the populations of Nassau or Suffolk Counties. Brooklyn was the fastest-growing borough.

The city’s gains accounted for 80 percent of the state’s growth.

Brooklyn, which is home to large numbers of Hispanic and Asian immigrants as well as Hasidic Jews, recorded the highest rate of natural increase, or births over deaths, in the state. The Bronx was second. Queens registered the highest percentage increase in foreign-born residents.

The city gained more people than the counties that include Dallas, Miami and San Diego in the Sun Belt, and nearly as many as Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix and has often been ranked as the fastest-growing county in the United States.

The one-year gain of nearly 60,000 people, from July 1, 2010, to July 1, 2011, was higher than most annual estimates in the 2000s, and higher than the average annual increase of about 17,000 in the previous decade, comparing the 2000 and 2010 censuses.

In every borough, more people left for other parts of the country than moved in, and a similar pattern was recorded in the counties that surround New York City.

The Bronx recorded the biggest loss through migration (more people leaving than moving in) over all. Manhattan was the only borough that showed a gain from combined domestic and international migration. The overall population increase was due largely to higher birthrates.

Over all, the population of the New York metropolitan area increased by nearly 119,000. The area ranked fourth in gains nationally, behind Dallas, Houston and Washington, and ahead of Los Angeles and Miami.

“Based upon this new round of estimates, it appears that New York City has returned to quite robust growth,” said Andrew A. Beveridge, a sociologist at Queens College. “The demographic effects of the financial crisis may be starting to wane.”

City officials said the new census figures were in line with the number of apartments and houses built since April 1, 2010.

    Population Growth in New York City Is Outpacing 2010 Census, 2011 Estimates Show, NYT, 5.4.2012,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/05/nyregion/census-estimates-for-2011-show-population-growth-in-new-york.html

Law on Condoms Threatens

Tie Between Sex Films and Their Home

March 7, 2012
The New York Times
By IAN LOVETT

LOS ANGELES — Since the early days of X-rated films, this city’s San Fernando Valley has been the industry’s home. With year-round sun, access to Hollywood filmmaking expertise and beautiful young people flocking to the region from around the country, pornographic studios have filmed thousands of movies here each year.

But a new ordinance requiring actors in pornographic films made in Los Angeles to use condoms could drive the multibillion-dollar industry from the city. The law took effect this week.

While sexual health advocates have hailed the requirement as a milestone in protecting the health of sex-film performers, pornographic film executives, who have long maintained that condom use in their movies cuts sharply into sales, have said they will have to consider relocating their operations.

“Clearly, the viewing public doesn’t want to watch movies with condoms,” said Steven Hirsch, an industry veteran and the founder of Vivid Entertainment. “If they mandate condoms, people will shoot in other locations.”

But despite the new restrictions it now faces, the pornographic film industry may struggle to find another home as welcoming as Los Angeles has been.

Officials in some nearby cities so fear becoming the next capital of pornography that they have already set about trying to ward the filmmakers off. Simi Valley, just across the hill from the San Fernando Valley in neighboring Ventura County, issued only one permit for a pornographic film last year, according to city officials there. But the City Council will vote this month on its own, even stricter condom requirement.

“This is a family-oriented community, and we don’t want the smut industry in our town,” Simi Valley’s mayor, Bob Huber, said.

By contrast, pornographic movies accounted for about 5 percent of all film permits issued in Los Angeles last year, according to Film L.A., the nonprofit agency that handles permits. Until the new city ordinance took effect on Monday, pornographic film companies had largely been allowed to police themselves, requiring performers to get tested for H.I.V. and other sexually transmitted infections at least once every 30 days.

In addition, in 1988, the California Supreme Court ruled that pornographic filmmakers could not be prosecuted under prostitution laws. The only other state with a similar ruling is New Hampshire, while in many states the issue has not been litigated.

For the moment, film production has continued largely unabated here, as the city works to determine how to enforce the condom requirement. And production companies say the ordinance does not require them to use condoms when filming at certified sound stages, which are permitted differently than shoots on location.

But the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which pushed for the Los Angeles condom law, is now collecting signatures for a November ballot initiative that would extend the requirement to more than 80 cities across Los Angeles County.

Mr. Hirsch said the industry would “fight back,” potentially with legal challenges or by moving operations elsewhere, if voters approve the measure.

Ged Kenslea, a spokesman for the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, said that prospect was unrealistic.

“The industry is not going to pack up and move,” Mr. Kenslea said. “They are too entrenched here. It would be very difficult to move a $13 billion industry out of the state.”

But some city officials have taken that threat more seriously. Mitchell Englander, a Los Angeles city councilman who represents the San Fernando Valley, was the only member of the Council to vote against the condom requirement, citing fears that jobs would leave his district.

“My great concern is that most of the large studios have said that if there is a strict enforcement on this, they would leave,” Mr. Englander said. “A lot of ancillary jobs are directly or indirectly related to this industry.”

With the rise of the Internet and digital cameras, professionals and amateurs alike have already begun making pornographic movies all over the country, some permitted, others not. And industry executives insist that many cities would welcome the billions of dollars in revenue that the industry rakes in.

In particular, Las Vegas, which hosts the annual Adult Entertainment Expo, has emerged as a place where some film studios go. Clyde DeWitt, a lawyer who represents pornographic film companies in both Los Angeles and Las Vegas, said that filming already occurs at hotels during the convention, while at least one company he represented opened a studio in Las Vegas.

“Office space is cheaper. Industrial space is cheaper. Housing is cheaper. There is a good supply of labor. There is no state income tax,” Mr. De Witt said. “If they wanted to come shoot here, it wouldn’t be difficult.”

If production companies do move their operations to Las Vegas or elsewhere, Mr. Kenslea promised the AIDS Healthcare Foundation would work to pass similar condom laws there as well.

“We will go where they go,” he said.

    Law on Condoms Threatens Tie Between Sex Films and Their Home, NYT, 7.3.2012,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/08/us/condom-rule-may-drive-sex-films-from-los-angeles.html

In California, City Teeters on Brink of Bankruptcy

February 29, 2012
The New York Times
By JENNIFER MEDINA

STOCKTON, Calif. — The signs of better times are easy to spot downtown: the picturesque marina on the San Joaquin Delta, the gleaming waterfront sports arena, and the handsome high-rise that was meant to house a new city hall. But those symbols are now bitter reminders of how bad things are here today: on Tuesday this city of almost 300,000 moved a step closer to becoming the nation’s largest city to declare bankruptcy.

During a contentious meeting that stretched late into the night, the City Council decided, nearly unanimously, to begin mediation with public employee unions and major bond creditors in what is widely seen as the city’s last-ditch attempt to restructure its finances outside of bankruptcy. Facing a budget deficit from $20 million to $38 million on a budget of roughly $165 million, the Council declared a fiscal emergency for the third year in a row.

“Right now we are a city that has frankly hit a wall,” Mayor Ann Johnston told the Council and hundreds of city residents who attended the meeting. “If the players don’t come together and agree to a fix, then we’re all in big trouble.”

Under a law passed by the California Legislature last year, cities must hire a third-party mediator to help negotiate with unions and debtors for a period of 90 days before declaring Chapter 9 bankruptcy. Stockton will be the first to test the new procedure. Nearby, Vallejo, Calif., declared bankruptcy in 2008, and Stockton has hired the same bankruptcy lawyer who represented that city.

Stockton officials say they hope mediation will allow them to avoid bankruptcy and indicated they might focus their push on reducing generous retiree health benefits. The city is also suspending $2 million in debt payments this year.

The city has already drastically cut back municipal staff, including the Police and Fire Departments. With nearly 100 fewer police officers than there were just four years ago, many residents fret about rising crime rates; there were 58 murders last year, an all-time high for the city.

City Manager Bob Deis blamed previous administrations for the city’s troubles, saying that in his 32 years of municipal management he had “never seen such poor fiscal management practices.”

Stockton, about an 80-mile drive east of San Francisco, boomed a decade ago, as eager buyers from Silicon Valley bought up homes in the area. But in the past several years, housing values have plummeted, and the city has steadily had one of the highest foreclosure rates in the country.

During the boom times, the city eagerly began development projects to improve the area, transforming the waterfront and refurbishing several buildings that had fallen into disrepair. City officials lured a Sacramento restaurateur to open an upscale bistro, in part by offering space in a historic downtown building rent-free for five years. But the restaurant struggled and closed after just two years, and the space has sat empty and shuttered for the past year.

In 2007, after Washington Mutual shut down operations in an eight-story building here, the city bought the space for $35 million, reasoning that the price was a bargain, less than the cost of construction. Officials planned to move out of the crumbling old City Hall building and into the Washington Mutual building, but it soon became clear that the city did not have the money for the move.

“The city was very aggressive in trying to take advantage of the boom and got completely swept up in those times — not unlike its citizens,” said Jeffrey Michael, the director of the Business Forecasting Center at the University of the Pacific. “It’s a combination of bad luck and bad management. If they’d been more prudent, you might still be cutting back 20 percent of the staff, but maybe you wouldn’t be dealing with the brink of bankruptcy.”

The city consented to a wide variety of bond agreements that have contributed to its increasing debt, but officials say that generous retirement health benefits and the increasing costs of maintaining them also threaten to cripple the city with insolvency. The city estimates that it will pay $9 million in retiree health care benefits in the 2012 fiscal year, and that the amount will double over the next 10 years.

Much of the harshest criticism of the current city administration has come from the police union, which has accused Mr. Deis of manipulating numbers. The union paid for billboards that proclaimed “Welcome to the 2nd most dangerous city in California: Stop laying off cops!” and included a running tally of murders in the city and Mr. Deis’s telephone number, against a background depicting spatters of blood. Mr. Deis accused the union of harassing him after it bought a house next door to his. The union said the purchase was an investment and not intended to antagonize Mr. Deis.

“Things have just gone from bad to worse,” said Kathryn Nance, an executive board member of the police union and a Stockton native. “There’s just nowhere to cut anymore, and the whole city is suffering.”

But Ms. Nance and other union officials say they believe that the city has more money than it is letting on and criticized decisions to give raises to several top city workers and spend millions on outside consultants and lawyers to help with the fiscal crisis.

Councilman Elbert Holman dismissed the union’s criticism by comparing the city to a patient with a life-threatening infection.

“If I have to cut off my arm to save my life, it’s a negative thing, but what choice do I have?” he said. “And who do I want to operate on me, an intern who has no experience or someone who has actually done this before? We can’t work off emotions. We just have to be practical.”

Even if there are no other options, nobody here sees bankruptcy as an ideal solution, and people fret about another black eye for a place that has twice been ranked the “most miserable city in America” by Forbes magazine.

Denise Jefferson, a former city planner and the executive director of the Miracle Mile Improvement District, said previous administrations had ignored signs of problems for years, despite internal criticism from employees.

“Everyone kept pretending that the problems were something the next generation could clean up, but there’s no way to clean this up anymore,” she said. “In high times everyone wants to grow, but the growth we had was never something we could sustain. We played the game, and now there’s no longer a game to play.”

Malia Wollan contributed reporting from Stockton,

and Mary Williams Walsh from New York.

    In California, City Teeters on Brink of Bankruptcy, NYT, 29.2.2012,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/01/us/stockton-calif-moves-closer-to-bankruptcy.html

Kevin H. White,

Mayor Who Led Boston in Busing Crisis,

Dies at 82

January 27, 2012
The New York Times
By MARGALIT FOX

Kevin H. White, a four-term mayor of Boston who came to national prominence for shepherding the city through years of racial violence and economic stagnation — and for a decadelong federal investigation into corruption in his administration — died Friday night at his home in the Beacon Hill section of Boston. He was 82.

His family announced his death through a spokesman, George Regan. Mr. White had been treated for Alzheimer’s disease since 2003.

In 1982, The New York Times described Mr. White as “the last of a class of vibrant, liberal, big-city mayors of the 1960s, personified by John V. Lindsay of New York, who talked of civil liberties, social justice and neighborhood needs.”

A Democrat who ran as a reformer, Mr. White served from 1968 to 1984. For much of this period, Boston was torn by public outrage over court-ordered busing to desegregate its schools. Protests turned violent, and some school buses carrying black children were pelted with stones. In this roiling storm, Mr. White was widely seen as a stabilizing presence as he extended protection to the children and imposed order through a heightened police presence.

On another occasion, after the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, Mayor White, as a way to head off violence in the streets, arranged for a James Brown concert to be shown on public television.

Mayor White’s first administrations in particular were noteworthy for the racial and ethnic diversity of their staffs. Mr. White was also known — at least early in his 16-year tenure — for helping decentralize municipal government by creating a series of “Little City Halls” in local neighborhoods.

In his later terms, he was perhaps better known for making Boston, in his words, “a world-class city,” encouraging development and refurbishing its flagging downtown, in particular the area around Faneuil Hall.

A trim man noted for his dapper attire, keen intellect and somewhat remote demeanor, Mr. White was seen by supporters as an iconoclast with refined sensibilities and by detractors as an autocrat with expensive tastes. All generally agreed, though, that by the time he left office in 1984, Mr. White had built a vast and powerful political machine whose like had not been seen in Boston since the four administrations of Mayor James M. Curley in first half of the 20th century. Mr. White’s machine appeared to harm him as much as help him. In the late 1970s, federal prosecutors began investigating the personal finances and political conduct of Mr. White and many of his associates.

The investigation gathered steam in 1981, with the appointment of William F. Weld as the United States attorney in Massachusetts. (Mr. Weld, a Republican, was the governor of Massachusetts from 1991 to 1997.)

Among the matters investigated was a planned birthday party for Mr. White’s wife in 1981 whose organizers — associates of Mr. White — were said to have solicited more than $120,000 from city workers and contractors to be given to the Whites for personal use. Mr. White canceled the party and returned the money after learning of the plan, he said afterward. Over 10 years, the investigation resulted in the conviction of more than 20 city officials, including some of Mr. White’s closest aides, and nearly as many businessmen. In April 1989, the United States attorney’s office closed the investigation without filing any charges against Mr. White.

Looking back on his administration in an interview with The Boston Globe later that month, Mr. White said: “There wasn’t much corruption. A lot of human folly, at best, but no serious corruption. I mean” — and here he deployed a favorite phrase , uttered as a single rushing word — “Mother o’ God.”

Kevin Hagan White was born in Boston on Sept. 25, 1929. Both his father, Joseph C. White, and his maternal grandfather, Henry E. Hagan, served as presidents of the Boston City Council; Joseph White was also a Massachusetts state legislator. Kevin White earned a bachelor’s degree from Williams College in 1952; a law degree from Boston College in 1955; and also studied at the Harvard Graduate School of Public Administration, now the John F. Kennedy School of Government.

In 1960, when he was barely 31, Mr. White was elected Massachusetts secretary of state. He was re-elected three times, serving until 1967 (Mr. White was elected to a four-year term in 1966; before that, the term was two years). That year, he ran his first mayoral campaign, defeating Louise Day Hicks, an ardent busing opponent, by fewer than 13,000 votes to become Boston’s 51st mayor. Mr. White was re-elected three times: in 1971, when he defeated Ms. Hicks again (she was by then a United States representative); in 1975; and in 1979.

When Mr. White assumed the mayoralty in January 1968, Boston was a tinderbox. In 1965, Massachusetts had passed the Racial Imbalance Act, which ordered school districts to desegregate or risk losing state financing. The law, the first of its kind in the nation, found little favor in Boston — especially in the Irish-American working-class area of South Boston.

In 1974, Judge W. Arthur Garrity Jr. of Federal District Court ordered Boston to begin busing children to integrate its schools. Months of racial violence followed, with dozens of people injured. In some white neighborhoods, protesters hurled slurs, and stones, at arriving school buses full of black children. Mr. White arranged police escorts for the buses and brought in several hundred state troopers to help keep order.

Though considered scholarly and aloof, Mr. White was, in the judgment of many, also exceptionally shrewd. When Dr. King was assassinated, on April 4, 1968, Mr. White feared race riots in his already tense city. By chance, the soul singer James Brown was scheduled to perform in the Boston Garden on April 5. Persuaded that the concert must go ahead as planned, Mr. White quickly arranged for it to be shown live on WGBH, the city’s public television station. The broadcast kept people at home in front of their television sets and became popularly known as “the night James Brown saved Boston.”

From the stage of the Garden that night, Mr. Brown gave Mr. White what was certainly among the highest compliments of his political career, calling him “a swinging cat.” But in the years to come, Mr. White and Boston appeared to grow disenchanted with each other. In 1975, on the heels of the busing crisis, Mr. White barely won re-election to a third term. In 1980, he publicly called Boston a “racist” city for its continued, sporadically violent, resistance to integration.

During Mr. White’s last two terms, his critics contended, this populist reformer of the 1960s became increasingly imperial. After his narrow victory in 1975, he assembled a political machine consciously modeled on that of Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago. Mr. White closed the “Little City Halls,” relying instead on old-style ward heelers to deal with the neighborhoods.

Boston also suffered an economic downturn: in 1980, for the first time in the city’s 350-year history, municipal employees went two weeks without pay as the city struggled to meet its own payroll.

In 1983, Mr. White announced he would not seek a fifth term.

Questions about Mr. White’s finances would bedevil him even after the federal investigation ended: in 1993, without admitting guilt, he agreed to return to the state nearly $25,000 in surplus campaign funds that he had used for flowers, groceries and other personal items. (In 1988, Mr. White had told The Globe that he planned to spend the money on himself out of “perversity and obstinacy.”)

From 1984 to 2002, Mr. White was the director of the Institute for Political Communication at Boston University.

Mr. White is survived by his wife, the former Kathryn Galvin, whom he married in 1956 and who was herself the daughter of a Boston City Council president; a brother, Terrence, who managed Mr. White’s early campaigns; two sons; three daughters; and seven grandchildren.

In 2006, a bronze statue of Mr. White was unveiled to great fanfare in front of Faneuil Hall. At 10 feet tall, it was, as many observers noted, quite a bit larger than life.

    Kevin H. White, Mayor Who Led Boston in Busing Crisis, Dies at 82, NYT, 27.1.2012,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/28/us/kevin-h-white-82-boston-mayor-during-busing-crisis-dies.html

From Boardwalk to Barrio, Los Angeles Cracks Down

January 9, 2012
The New York Times
By JENNIFER MEDINA

LOS ANGELES — On the boardwalk of Venice Beach, the trinkets seem endless. There are glass pipes, copper necklaces, feather earrings and painted wooden skulls.

Just east of MacArthur Park, along Alvarado Street in the Westlake neighborhood of Los Angeles, the sidewalk hums with people selling and buying tamales, faux leather wallets, cellphone accessories and perfume.

The two street markets are separated by 15 miles, and are worlds apart. In Venice, there are throngs of tourists, clusters of wandering teenagers and countless signs for medical marijuana. Near Alvarado, the sidewalks are crowded with immigrants hustling to and from work and grandmothers looking for the latest pills to ease their ailments.

But both markets are illicit, says the City of Los Angeles, and officials are beginning to crack down. Illegal vendors, the authorities say, bring with them threats of crime and an influx of people eager to sleep on city streets. Storekeepers who rent space on the other side of the Venice boardwalk complain that they are losing customers to the sidewalk sellers, or losing foot traffic altogether.

“This is a real go-to place and people come here from all over the planet, and they were just taking over with junk and cheap trinkets,” said City Councilman Bill Rosendahl, who represents Venice. “The history here is of free speech, not selling all kinds of nonsense. You’d have people fighting for spots and undercutting the people who play by the rules and pay taxes in their space.”

Indeed, Venice has long been a major attraction for tourists, who come to the boardwalk to take in the 80-degree winter weather, to watch the bodybuilders at Muscle Beach — and yes, even to buy a few tchotchkes. For years, performers have entertained the masses, dancing on roller skates or playing the piano on the sidewalk and asking only for a few coins.

And for almost as long, artists have set up tables to sell their wares. But last year, after a federal court dismissed a city ordinance as unconstitutional, the number of vendors hawking mass-produced items like T-shirts and costume jewelry grew rapidly. Soon, local people said, it was impossible to see the ocean from what is officially called Ocean Front Walk.

A new ordinance that goes into effect on Jan. 20 is intended to forbid only those who are selling items that could be considered to have utilitarian value — that means art is allowed but T-shirts are not. Mr. Rosendahl said that several city and First Amendment lawyers have assured him that the law will stand up in court.

“Who gets to decide what art is?” asked Emry Daley, who has sold Rastafarian gear from his native Jamaica for nearly five years. He pointed to the wooden pipes and leather bracelets that he said he had made. “Nobody can get this anywhere but here. This is something special. We sell things that inspire people.”

It was a different kind of push and pull around Westlake, as the district between Koreatown and downtown is called. Immigrants from Central America started moving into the area decades ago. Restaurants and stores catering to Salvadorans and Guatemalans were not far behind, and soon entrepreneurial types began selling things like fresh cut fruit and athletic socks out of boxes and shopping carts they pushed along the streets. Officially, it was illegal, and the police would not hesitate to cite and fine offenders.

But in 2010, when a Guatemalan immigrant holding a knife was killed by the police, the neighborhood erupted in protests. Eager to soothe lingering tensions, city officials told police officers to stop singling out the vendors. As word spread, more sidewalk entrepreneurs streamed in, spreading ever more blankets on which to lay out their wares.

“I was just blown away by the size. I’d count 280 people crowded on a sidewalk,” said City Councilman Ed Reyes, who represents the area. Mr. Reyes, whose mother sold tortillas on the street, said he was aware that the market acted as a kind of cultural center for the community — a place where people would get their gossip along with their tamales and off-label medicines. “We had to figure out a way to clean it up without getting rid of it.”

With federal grant money, Mr. Reyes has led the creation of a new city-sponsored weekend market, which requires vendors to undergo training and licensing. The plan has met with some trepidation: only 80 sellers have signed up for 120 spots.

Now there are signs all along the street ominously warning that “street and sidewalk sales of goods are prohibited” and threatening violators with a $1,000 fine or time in jail.

Clearly, people here are nervous — they scattered every time they saw a traffic officer or an interloper with a camera.

But they said that they would keep selling as long as they could — getting a permit for the official new market would cost about $500, about half of what they would have to pay if they were fined. Many vendors said that they were not living in the United States legally and feared that immigration officials would come after them if they filled out the paperwork required to be licensed at the new market.

“They can chase me wherever they want, I’ll go and hide someplace for a few minutes and then I will come back again,” said Marta Cortez, 43, who has sold fruit and homemade hot chocolate on the street almost since the day she arrived here from El Salvador nearly two decades ago. “This is how I make money for my family. If I go to a new market where I can only sell on the weekends, how can I have enough to give my children food to eat?”

When a police car pulled alongside Ms. Cortez, she started to pack up her juices and hot drinks. Less than two minutes later, the patrol car was gone. Ms. Cortez was already chopping up a new batch of fruit.

    From Boardwalk to Barrio, Los Angeles Cracks Down, NYT, 9.1.2012,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/us/los-angeles-cracking-down-on-street-vendors.html