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FDNY Riots
Against Giuliani

by Robert Lederman

robert.lederman@worldnet.att.net
November 2, 2001

[See quotes below]

Chanting, "Bring the victims home!", hundreds of NYC firemen broke through police barricades and marched on the WTC disaster site around noon today to protest Mayor Giuliani's decision to dramatically reduce the FDNY (Fire Department New York) presence at the site. Numerous firemen were arrested in the course of the angry rally which at the time of this writing was marching on City Hall.

The firemen say Giuliani reneged on his promise to recover all the bodies of more than 300 FDNY workers who died in the disaster. Some of the protestors complained that the Mayor ordered the withdrawal of all but 25 of the thousand or so firemen on the site once 200 million dollars in gold buried beneath the rubble was recovered. The recovery of the gold was done by the NYPD and FDNY.

Since 9/11 Mayor Giuliani has made countless speeches about the bravery and sacrifice of the FDNY, often appearing publicly in a FDNY hat while doing television interviews or leading celebrity tours of the disaster site. Behind the scenes an undercurrent of resentment by FDNY members against the Mayor and Fire Commissioner has percolated, virtually uncovered by the media which has gone to extraordinary lengths to convince the public that Giuliani is a hero with an almost 100 percent approval rating.

Last week Giuliani presided over an emotional ceremony in which family members of the WTC victims were given a small urn of dirt from the site in order to give them a sense of closure. Most of the thousands of bodies have not as yet been recovered and what was at first a meticulous hand operation by firemen searching for remains has gradually changed into one of giant cranes and trucks operated by a demolition company clearing away the rubble and carting it off to a dump site.

Public criticism of the Mayor became almost non-existent after 9/11, briefly resurfacing when he attempted to violate term limits and remain in office. The FDNY, NYPD and EMS have had numerous complaints about the mayor which have been suppressed for years by management.

Newsday Letters 10/26/2001

"Since the tragedy an Sept. 11, my husband, a New York City Emergency Service Police officer has been working a minimum of 12 hours--per-day (most often, they have been 14-16 hour days). He has had only one day off in al-most three weeks. Despite Mayor Rudy Giuliani's cries of 'hero, hero, hero' over the years, he has refused to pay these officers what they deserve.
The last contract included a zero percent increase. These devoted men and women are currently working without a contract and have been doing so since last July. This is not how they should be treated. It's time for him to go. He has made the lives of city police officers and their families a living hell for years. Most officers work two jobs and most wives work also, and we still have a difficult time making ends meet. I voted for term limits when I lived in the city and I look forward to the day he leaves. He is so cocky that he thinks only he can take care of the problems at hand." - Melinda Camastro, East Meadow

NY Times 10/24/2001

Split in Ranks:
Commissioner Hears the Boos
of Firefighters

"But even as the events of Sept. 11 strengthened those bonds, it did little to soften the bitter feelings that many firefighters have long held for Fire Commissioner Thomas Von Essen [one of Giuliani's closest aides]. Indeed, on Saturday night, when Mr. Von Essen took the stage at a benefit concert at Madison Square Garden, many of several thousand firefighters in attendance joined in sustained booing...Mr. Von Essen's unpopularity was a problem of his own creation, the stubborn residue of five years in which he has butted heads with many firefighters, officers, emergency medical technicians and the unions that represent them. "The E.M.S. people have been unhappy with Von Essen for years," said Robert Ungar, a spokesman for the emergency medical technicians' union. "This crisis wasn't going to change that."...Similarly, Capt. Peter Gorman, the president of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association and one of Mr. Von Essen's harshest critics, also declined to speak of their relationship or the conduct of firefighters at the Garden. "I have and continue to have serious labor-management issues, but we have agreed to put them on the back burner," he said...Others complained that Mr. Von Essen has been on television too much, appearing with David Letterman, standing alongside Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani at news conferences and being honored by the British government instead of being with them at ground zero."

Newsday 10/25/2001

Questions About Safety of Workers

Hundreds of injuries to workers combing through the rubble at the World Trade Center might have been prevented had the city been faster to require proper training and equipment at what is still an "extremely hazardous" work site, according to a sharply worded federal report. "There is no excuse for what I saw," John Moran, an engineer and industrial hygienist, said yesterday. Moran investigated working conditions at Ground Zero in the weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks as a consultant to the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. The report he coauthored was released this week by the institute, an arm of the federal National Institutes of Health. "When I was up there, there was no evidence of any safety or health program or plan. It's the worst site I've ever seen - extremely hazardous. Very few of the workers were wearing even the most basic protective equipment," said Moran, who was at Ground Zero from Sept. 22 to 27."

Daily News 11/2/2001

Bravest to Protest WTC Cuts

In a show of defiance, hundreds of New York's Bravest plan to rally downtown today to protest the mayor's orders to reduce the number of firefighters at the World Trade Center site...There's no logical reason why they would want us to pull back when we still have more than 200 bodies - just the firefighters - unrecovered," said one disgusted firefighter...The union said the mayor is reneging on a promise he made Sept. 18 at a closed-door gathering of 1,000 grieving family members of missing firefighters that "we will be at the site to work for the recovery of your loved ones until the last brick is removed," Gallagher said. "I think it's an atrocity," said Theresa Reagan, whose 47-year-old firefighter husband, Donald, is missing in the rubble. "My husband deserves to be found."

NY Times 11/1/2001

THE VAULT

Below Ground Zero, Silver and Gold

The Associated Press

Two Brinks trucks were at ground zero on Wednesday to start hauling away the $200 million in gold and silver that the Bank of Nova Scotia had stored in a vault under the trade center...A team of 30 firefighters and police officers are helping to move the metals, a task that can be measured practically down to the flake but that has been rounded off at 379,036 ounces of gold and 29,942,619 ounces of silver...The bank also engaged Kroll Inc., a security business based in New York, to supervise the relocation of the gold and silver, a process that began this week, The Daily News reported yesterday. Michael Cherkasky, the president of Kroll, declined to comment on his company's involvement. Anyone trying to make off with the gold would not be able to run very fast: each ingot weighs 70 pounds.

Village Voice 10/8/2001

From: La Dolce Musto

But before you decide: In '99, despite complaints-like how the building was a potential target and also happened to be owned by a political supporter-our mayor had an emergency bunker built at 7 World Trade Center. Legendarily enough, a 6000-gallon fuel tank was installed there to run the generators in case of a power outage. Well, when the planes hit the other two towers on September 11, flying debris fell on 7 WTC, which some insiders say ignited that very fuel. Still love Rudy?

NY Times 6/13/98

Giuliani's $15.1 Million
'Emergency Control Center

Mayor Rudolph Giuliani is now bracing for a whole other order of urban treachery and cataclysm by building a $15.1 million emergency control center for his administration...bullet-proofed, hardened to withstand bombs and hurricanes, and equipped with food and beds for at least 30 members of his inner circle.

To a Directory of Mr.Lederman's Essays

Robert Lederman is an artist, writer and activist and is also the President of the street artist advocacy group, A.R.T.I.S.T.
Click here for an archive of A.R.T.I.S.T. related news articles on the Freedom Forum website

His essays and Op-Eds have appeared in hundreds of alternative publications as well as the Daily News, Penthouse, Africa Sun Times, Street News and The Shadow.
Lederman was falsely arrested 41 times for his anti-Giuliani activities and was never convicted of any of the charges. As a result of the arrests, he's won four Federal lawsuits and overturned three laws.
He is best known for having created hundreds of paintings of Mayor Giuliani as a Hitler like dictator which were carried in demonstrations throughout the eight years of the Giuliani administration. Images of his paintings and articles about his arrests and lawsuits have appeared on all of the major television networks hundreds of times as well as frequently appearing in the NY Times, Daily News, NY Post, Newsday, Newsweek, People, The Washington Post, LA Times and NY Magazine.

Robert Lederman,
President of A.R.T.I.S.T.
(Artists' Response To Illegal State Tactics)
robert.lederman@worldnet.att.net

For a detailed exposition on the West Nile issue
http://www.nospray.org/
For an article on the Manhattan Institute go to
http://www.konformist.com/2000/rudyg.htm

If you would like to help oppose the spraying,
please write to the
No Spray Coalition
PO Box 334
Peck Slip Station
NYC, NY 10272-0334
or call the No Spray hotline at (718) 670-7110.

Any funds you can send to help continue the lawsuit
and this work are greatly appreciated.

Important Note:
Mr. Lederman has explained that his articles posted here are not to be taken as official statements by the No-Spray Coalition of which he is a member or of the "No-Spray" lawsuit in which he is a plaintiff.

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And by clicking here, you'll see an old suggestion (May 2003) of how Democrats could/should have protested the Republican convention and G.W. Bush.

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