It was music to my ears to hear that the New York State Senate was tied up in knots for more than a month. Mayor Michael Bloomberg is bent on maintaining exclusive mayoral control over schools and hiking the sales tax. Black politicians are in his hip pocket. Both of these measures will cause great harm to Blacks in New York City.
In fact, these measures only target residents of New York City. Mayoral control of schools and an increase in sales taxes will only affect Blacks, Latinos and Asians. Most middle-class whites refuse to send their children to public schools. Similarly, the sales tax is a regressive measure and disproportionately affects the poor.
Compulsory public education was created in the 19th century to establish two routes for poor children. Children who successfully ran the obstacle course would be escorted into the military-industrial complex. An example is Gen. Colin Powell. Those children who flunked the race would be diverted into the prison-industrial complex. See the life of Willie Bosket.
No economic opportunities exist in New York City for Blacks. Since Mayor Bloomberg was given a lease to Gracie Mansion in 2002, the unemployment rate for Black males has jumped to over 50 percent. Public employment for Blacks has dropped precipitously. Municipal rules have been written that militate against public contracts for Blacks.
Those Blacks who favor mayoral control of schools are unable to connect the dots and think outside the box. Mayor Bloomberg already controls the family courts, the criminal courts, the civil courts and, concomitantly, the housing courts. The jilted customers in these courts are Blacks and Latinos.
By law, Mayor Bloomberg is able to appoint most of the municipal court judges. He has the exclusive right to appoint criminal and family court judges. Any casual observer of the city’s nearly all-white judicial system can take judicial notice that it is racist to the core and is designed to not only disrupt Black families but also to displace them. These are police courts.
Black politicians are supposed to be paid to see the “big picture.” The key to keeping Mayor Bloomberg’s conspiracy against Blacks alive was the extension of term-limits. Minus three dissenters, Black politicians sided with Mayor Bloomberg and against the will of their constituents.
With a nearly all-white judicial system in a city that has a white minority population, it would be difficult to imagine Black politicians being more than political proxies in the appointment of judicial officers. There are judicial conventions and Black politicians who fight to become political proxies instead of judicial delegates.
Afterwards, they push white candidates for the bench. A judicial convention in New York City is equivalent to a “white primary.” Once these white lawyers become judicial oath-takers, Black politicians have no say over their public policy positions. Municipal courts have more sway over our lives than the U.S. Supreme Court.
I live in a massive, middle-class, residential complex in Manhattan originally designed to give quarters to Blacks and Latinos. Since April 7, 2000, I have had no landlord, and since 2001, I have been residing in these premises without a lease, even though I am supposed to be protected under the Rent Stabilization Law. The Division of Housing and Community Renewal is sitting on its hands.
Nevertheless, I have been sued, frivolously, three times in Manhattan Housing Court by a corporation that has no proprietary interest in the subject premises. The Real Property Actions and Proceedings Law supposedly requires a landlord-tenant relationship before a housing court can maintain a dispossess proceeding. I am the exception to this strict rule. When a grantor delivers a deed to the grantee, the grantor divests itself of all title to the premises, and the rights of the landlord with respect to any tenant are transferred by operation of the conveyance to the grantee. This law is applied selectively. It should be strictly applied.
To make matters worse, the state attorney general’s office has intervened on behalf of the trial judge who is turning the landlord-tenant law upside down and is selectively applying the law. Everyone admits that the housing court lacks subject-matter jurisdiction over this dispossess proceeding. Yet, I will be exposed to a warrant of eviction on September 15 before the political convention in Buffalo.
This same state attorney general’s office argued that I could be disbarred in People v. Sharpton for refusing to violate Rev. Al Sharpton’s attorney-client privilege. In other words, I had to choose between being a snitch and a sacrificial lamb. The latter meant permanent unemployment. The struggle continues.
Instead of defending a housing court judge who is flouting the law, the office of the state attorney general should have already indicted this wayward corporation for a scheme to defraud and cause wrongful evictions of scores of tenants over the past decade. In New York, rich, white corporations can use the courts with impunity to wrongfully evict tenants.
The future for Blacks in New York is bleak. We are virtually voiceless politically. No one will step forward to stop this Bloomberg steamroller. Cannibalism is running amuck. Legal representation for Blacks in New York City ended on May 21,1990,when I was illegally disbarred. It has chilled Black lawyers.
My petition for writ of certiorari is now pending in the U.S. Supreme Court with no help from leading Blacks. Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has until July 31, by the High Court and the Code of Professional Responsibility, to come clean and disclose the files of Tawana Brawley. They have been classified as top secret since November 1987. A top secret classification for a “hoax” is absurd.
It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out the fate of thousands of Blacks weekly in housing courts if a housing court judge can push around someone who has more than 35 years of experience in landlord-tenant law. The Black population of New York City is being decimated every year for myriad reasons. Wrongful evictions is one of them.
In any political system, there will always be predators. Since we have not enjoyed any rights of self-defense under the First, the Second nor the 15th amendments, our fate is sealed. These constitutional amendments were ratified to provide self-defense to “citizens.”
We have no standing in either the courts or the political assemblies. Oppressive laws are written by legislatures, prosecuted by district attorneys and enforced by the courts. See, for example, the legislative disparity between the use of crack cocaine versus the use of powder cocaine.
This is why I was rooting for a continued political stalemate in Albany. Routinely, Black politicians go along to get along. Our political representatives have become political proxies. By voting under these circumstances, we are only endorsing our oppression. The political stalemate in Albany at least gave us a reprieve. Only Gov. David Paterson and Senate President Malcolm Smith were upset.
Our lack of knowledge of history will prove to be suicidal. We are unable to connect the dots or engage in a comparative analysis. History is repeating itself. See for example Black flight from white terrorism in New York City during the Civil War. See also
the forced embarkment of the Cherokee Nation on the “Train of Tears.”
July 19-Aug 1: The start of Freedom Retreat for Girls in the Catskill Mountains. This is the only African-centered, sleepaway summer retreat in the nation. For more information, call UAM at (718) 834- 9034.
July 21: Birthday Celebration at Cotton Club, 656 West 125th Street in Harlem at 7 p.m. for only the loyal supporters of Alton Maddox throughout his ordeals.
July 22: UAM Weekly Forum at Elks Plaza, 1068 Harriet Tubman (Fulton Street) near Classon Avenue in Brooklyn at 7:30 p.m. Take the “C” train to Franklin Avenue. Two blocks to Elks Plaza. Admission is free.
July 26: Family Day for Freedom Retreat for Girls in the Catskill Mountains. An all-day cookout, which is reminiscent of the outings at Peg Leg Bates in the 1950s. For bus transportation, call UAM at (718) 834-9034.
Sept.19:The historic, inaugural meeting of the Freedom Party in Buffalo.