Giuliani's ties to black New York troubled: He was "vindictive, brutal"

[Bluebear]

NEW YORK -- Once the cultural capital of black America, Harlem had reached the bottom of decades of decline by the late 1980s, with streets full of abandoned houses, virtually an open-air crack cocaine market and thousands of violent crimes each year. It took the collaboration of people including Rudolph W. Giuliani, the mayor of New York from 1994 to 2001, and Karen Phillips, who ran the development arm of a historic black church, to turn it around.

Under policies advanced by the Giuliani administration and carried out by Phillips and other activists dedicated to saving the neighborhood, real estate and retail boomed and crime plunged. It was dubbed the second Harlem Renaissance, and Giuliani seemed quite proud of his achievements there, telling the New York Daily News in December 2000 that "the reality is that my administration has done more for Harlem than any administration in the last 50 years."

Phillips, however, now finds nothing positive to say about Giuliani. Besides being "vindictive," his approach was "you're either with me or you're my enemy," Phillips, a member of New York's city planning commission, said in a recent interview. "I can't see him as president. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/09/AR2007060901420.html?hpid=topnews"..

Giuliani "paints himself as the savior" of New York, Phillips said, "but he was brutal in terms of how he dealt with this. That kind of government was not productive."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/09/AR2007060901420.html?hpid=topnews

[HockeyMom]

1. Rudy nearly caused race riots

when he was mayor. I remember it well.

[elfin]

2. But if he has chalked off that voter group already ---

what does it matter. Voter suppression will take care of many of the others who dare to vote.

He is sooooo scary.