NADER'S NADIR. THE (LENORA FULANI) LYNDON LAROUCHE CONNECTION

UP FRONT News February 25, 2008
Published by Tom Weiss
Editorial Advisor: Willard Whittingham
"The paper that can't be bought and can't be sold."


The potentially most controversial aspect of the Ralph Nader 2008 presidential candidacy announced yesterday on Meet the Press lies in the questions that were not asked by Tim Russert.

Nader, again promoting the Green Party's dubious claim that the Democrats and Republicans are carbon copies of each other, did however correctly assert that none of the major parrty presidential candidates has come out openly for single payer health insurances (such as that proposed in H.R. 676, introduced into the House by U.S. Congressman John Conyers (D.-Mich.) Nader also correctly pointed to the fact that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have been terribly effective in curbing corporate greed. Indeed, it was Nader's long time focusing on the corporate threat to American democracy that drew me to him originally when he first ran for president in 1996.

On Meet the Press, however, Nader gave himself away regarding some the of neo-fascists who have supported him when he launched into a one-sided anti-Israel capsule description of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that would have done a local neo-nazi like the Holocaust denier Andy Kellerman proud.

It was in 1996 that I became aware of the reality that, among those parasiting onto and into Nader's populist message were people connected to none other than another activist who routinely denounces the Democrats and the Republicans purporting to represent an "independent" alternative. That activist is none other than the aging but still hyperactive convicted felon and mega-fascist Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.

At the time, since the involvement of LaRouche-ites disguised as leftists seemed periferal, I did little in terms of writing about it. I did, however, make a point of bringing the matter up with Nader personally when I met him (as I had a few times previously) at a campaign stop in Rochester, N.Y. I had already been seriously harassed LaRouche-style by a bunch of Nader Greens in Binghamton.

The LaRouche infiltration became much more apparent and blatant in the 2000 and 2004 Nader presidential campaigns. In fact, a key operative in the Nader presidential campaings has been none other than the virulent anti-Jewish racist Lenora Fulani, who will sell her political soul to the highest bidder no matter what the party affiliation might be. That is why in 2001 Fulani, in her capacity as the dictator of the misnomered Independence Party of New York, gave then Republican Michael Bloomberg the IPNY ballot line, enabling him to win the mayoralty in 2001 in a very close election. Fulani and Bloomberg cut the same deal in 2005.

Lenora Fulani, for years parading as a populism-spouting black nationalist, is in fact the author of the genocide-rationalizing statement that Jews en masse are responsible for the "murders of people of color." Fulani's most immediate political mentor is "Dr." Fred Newman, a "psychotherapist" and leader of the so-called "social therapy" cult and advocate of the sex-with-your-therapist school of which he reportedly has been an active practitioner. Newman, perhaps the archetypical self-hating Jew, has characterized Jews as the "stormtroopers of decadent capitalism."

Both of them are ideological surrogates for none other than the Germany-worshiping American Fuehrer-wannabe LaRouche, who has openly declared his intent to become the unchallenged ruler of the U.S. - and thereby the world. LaRouche, since his release from a federal penitentiary following his conviction for mail and credit card fraud, has been living in Hitler-style isolation with his wife Helga Zepp-LaRouche in the fortress-like estate known as Ibikus Farm in Loudon County (Leesburg), Va.

As the Bush administration has continued to implode, LaRouche - well known for his dramatic ideological shifts between the ultra-left and ultra-right (all behind a veneer of rhetorical respect for FDR) - has gone "left." He ritualistically denounces Bush and Cheney, rhetorically dressing himself up in "anti-War" language and calling for the impeachment of the president. (La Rouche, like his left supporters, knows full well that, regardless of the merits of an impeachment case, it won't happen and, even if it did, that would bring the even worse Dick Cheney into the White House, thereby transforming our virtual fascism under Bush into the real thing under the ghoulish Cheney.

Perhaps the most knowledgeable journalist, other than myself, on the LaRouche/Fulani/
Newman tie is the investigative reporter Dennis King, author of the very unauthorized bio- graphy of LaRouche entitled "The New American Fascism." For more information on all this visit http://www.tomsupfrontnews.blogspot.com/ and http://www.dennisking.org/.

What many people, apparently including Tim Russert, remain unaware of is that Fulani & Co. have in recent years pretty much taken over the Green Party, particularly in New York.
The takeover has been accomplished by a network of left-spouting activists with a flair for political violence, a good deal of which has been directed at me. These operatives include Greens such as Paul ("Zool") Zulkowitz, who, in response to my UP FRONT News criticism of his riot-inciting games at his so-called Cindy Sheehan-enticing "Camp Casey" in 2005 Union Square in Manhattan, responded with a suicide threat, a move that got him involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital in Long Island. And, some weeks later when he was (apparently prematurely) released, he confided to a friend that he was going to shoot me with his Magnum 357.

Also involved in this sort of grass roots fascism are Green Party City Councilman-wannabe Gerald Kann and his affiliated hitman George Tatevosyan. Ralph Nader knows all about the Tatevosyan/Kann physical assault on me in April, 2004 to prevent my attending a Nader news conference at 72 Madison Avenue in Manhattan because they didn't want me to embarass the neo-fascist Queen Fulani who was upstairs with Nader.

Ralph Nader is a critical voice for the network of left-spewing neo-fascists who blend populist rhetoric with threats and serious violence against those who ask too many questions.
That network includes psychopaths like the former dictator of Union Square Geoffrey Blank. Indeed, Blank's obsequeous younger brother Jason, when asked some years ago about the repoted Blank/LaRouche connection, would only say, "I'd rather not answer that question." There are others including the Neandethal "missing link" impersonating Gary Phaneuf, who, in classic LaRouche libel style would scream "Cointelpro" in his threatening attempts to shut me up. This guy, for a long time a regular at various ultra-left events, on several occasions actually stalked me on the Staten Island Ferry. And then there is Blank and Phaneuf pal, the "poet" "Pistol" Pete Dolack, who has reponded to my appearance at public poetry evets by trying to have me arrested. Dolack, like so many on the LaRouchite "left" such as Les Jamieson and "Father" Frank Morales (of the so-called "9/11 Truth" group at the St. mark's in-the-Bowery Church in Manhattan), and the World Can't Wait cult successfully blend the rhetoric of Maoism with the violence of both maoism and fascism.

On a somewhat less zoological level there is Charles Lenchner, connected to LaRouche's magazine, Executive Intelligence Review, who also pushed me around in his capacity as a worker for the LaRouche ideologue Jonathan Tasini, who, long after I announced my Democratic write-in candidacy for the U.S. Senate against Hillary Clinton, decided to run and generate explicit threats against me. For more on my candidacy against Hillary Clinton and also against the LaRouchites visit http://www.tomweissdemocratforussenate.blogspot.com/. What was even more potentially scary was the fact that the tapeworm Lenchner, an official of the outwardly respectable Progressive Democrats of America, became a worker in first the Dennis Kucinich and later the John Edwards campaigns.

LaRouche, via for example Ralph Nader, is employing he classic fascist political strategy of impersonating the left, unlike "conservatives", who denounce the left. It is always useful to remember that Adolf Hitler campaigned as a capitalism-denouncing "socialist." Splitting up the left is usually done by outlefting progressives, such as those in the large left wing of the Democratic Party, many of whom, totally alienated by the Republicrat Hillary Clinton, are supporting Barack Obama.

In 2000 and 2004 that tactic worked well, in part because in Al Gore and John Kerry the Democrats had candidates who left true progressives cool if not ice cold.

LaRouche's purpose is, while denouncing the right (Bush) and splitting the left, to actually help the right, as he most certainly did via Nader in 2000 and 2004. The result is the election of reactionaries and the inevitable deterioration of social conditions, which is precisely what fascism needs to advance politically, the Post World war I Weimar Republic in econimcally devastated Germany being a good case in point.

On January 30, 2007 Ralph Nader did a booksigning at the Barnes & Noble at Union Square. He was coy in response to some questions about his presidential ambitions. He pointedly did not call on me although I had my hand up. And when I replied by spontaneously mentioning Lenora Fulani his mood darkened and he gruffly made a comment about my persistence on that subject.

I also once met Tim Russert at a B&N Union Square booksigning. As I recall, he talked some about sports and about growing up in Buffalo. I had my hand up and he called on me. I don't recall my question at the time, but I do recall that, unlike the suddenly surly Ralph Nader, he gave a polite and responsive reply.

As far as I am concerned, Tim Russert needs to ask Ralph Nader some more questions.
Tomsupfrontnews@yahoo.com
www.groups.yahoo.com/group/UPFRONTNewsdiscussionforum
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LETTER TO THE LEFT: WHY I AM SUPPORTING OBAMA IN THE DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY AGAINST REPUBLICRAT HILLARY

UP FRONT News February 1, 2008
Published by Tom Weiss
Editorial Advisor: Willard Whittingham
"The paper that can't be bought and can't be sold."

As far as I am concerned as small "d" and capital "D" Democratic progressive, the greatest de facto electoral danger from the standpoint of human rights, domestic and international emanates from Republicrat Hillary Clinton. There are reasons why out-and-out leftists that I have talked to have told me they would sooner vote for a conservative Republican like John McCain than Mrs. Clinton. Why? Because, even recognizing that McCain is wrong on just about every issue, especially the War in Iraq, at least he appears to say what he means. Those potential "left" McCain voters might reconsider in light of the likelihood that President McCain would make Giulani Attorney General, a step that would help convert the virtual fascism of George Bush to actual fascism."

I have dealt with Mrs. Clinton quite directly as an activist/constituent whom she has threatened and placed under surveillance. (You should all read the e-mail that one of her staffers sent to my brother after she denied me urgently needed constituent assistance with a Social Security matter when I was homeless some years ago.)

My constituent experiences with this arrogant and deceitful politician were, however, not the main motivation for my decision to run against her as a Democratic write-in candidate for the U.S. Senate. (See http://www.tomweissdemocratforussenate.blogspot.com/.)

I decided to run against her because she is in fact an opportunistic Republicrat who is essentially a corporate cash cow. (Her recurrently wandering husband is a corporate cash bull.)

Mrs. Clinton's poll-driven gymnastics with regard to the Iraq War mean nothing coming from a political team that has been aptly described by their former supporters Hollywood powerhouse David Geffen as made up of a couple who "lie with such ease."

Mrs. Clinton shares a political bed with the most predatory corporate moguls around. Among those who raise money for her are Donald Trump, the Corcoran Group and Rupert Murdoch. (The fact that his New York Post has endorsed Obama means little since few people read the Post for anything other than sex, crime and sports, and Britney Spears coverage anyway.)

And Mrs. Clinton, like a host of other politicians, is involved in the continuing coverup of the racist Chinese Communist Genocide in Tibet. There are still many people unaware that the the dark-complexioned Tibetans are ethnically, lingustically and culturally distinct from
their light-skinned oppressors. Communist China is little more than a massive hedge fund from which international corporate capitalism profits mightily. And one of the largest profit generators is the planned 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. Many people are unaware that the preparation for the Games has generated a tsunami of mega-development that has led to the displacement of 2 million people. I have made that fact known in a recent Obama endorsing editiorial sent to a number of tenants rights activists in New York.

As do many progressives, I have some reservations about Barack Obama, who has not yet said anything publicly about the Tibet and Olympic Games issue (which some months ago I discussed directly with his wife Michelle as State Senator Bill Perkins, who witnessed the conversation, is well aware.

As far as I am concerned, should Barack Obama turn out to be another Al Gore or John Kerry, there is always the possibility of supporting someone like former U.S. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, who has said she plans to seek the Green Party nomination for the presidency. I've met her and advised her that, before she goes too far with the Greens, she check to see whether that rather ethnically white party has rid itself of the Lyndon LaRouche/Lenora Fulani infiltration. For more on that visit http://www.tomsupfrontnews.blogspot.com/ and http://www.dennisking.org/.

At thus point the only person that can stop Republicrat Hillary is Barack Obama. As a democratic Democrat I intend to vote for him on February 5.
Tomsupfrontnews@yahoo.com
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HILLARY CLINTON VS. TENANTS DEMOCRATS PLEASE VOTE FOR BARACK OBAMA ON FEBRUARY 5!

UP FRONT News January 31, 2008
Published by Tom Weiss
Editorial Advisor: Willard Whittingham
"The paper that can't be bought and can't be sold."

Although tenants rights as an issue rarely enters presidential campaigns, there is no question in my mind that should Hillary Clinton manage to purchase the presidency, as she is clearly attempting to do, the situation facing tenants will worsen considerably.

Mrs. Clinton, like her local commander City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, skillfully uses populist rhetoric to conceal her loyalties to the corporate establishment, which most assuredly includes the titans of the New York real estate lobby. I still have copies of the Daily News photo of her appearance some months ago soliciting the support of the Corcoran Group, a huge real estate firm engaged in the proliferation of what New York least needs, luxury housing. (The "working class" Daily News, owned by the magnate owner of Boston Properties Morton Zuckerman, has hired Ms. Corcoran herself to do a weekly column geared to attract the gentry.)

Donald Trump has often made his view known that, in his lordly opinion, Mrs. Clinton would be a good president. Tell that to the victims (including one dead construction worker) of his SoHo luxury housing atrocity.

Hillary Clinton is the ultimate corporate cash cow. A major reason for her silence on the Chinese Communist Genocide in Tibet and on the rising opposition to the Beijing Olympics (which evoke the famous "Hitler Olympics" in 1936 in Berlin where the African-American runner Jesse Owens left Hitler's "aryans" in the dust in his way to four gold medals) is because, like her financial supporter media predator Rupert Murdoch, she makes a lot of money in the hedge fund known as "Communist" China. The details of the direct involvement of Bill and Hillary Clinton in the coverup of the Genocde in Tibet are available at http://www.tomsupfrontnews.blogspot.com/ and http://www.tomweissdemocatforussenate.blogspot.com/.

Since I discussed the matter directly by telephone some years ago with Bill Clinton's secretary Betty M. Currie (of Monica Lewinsky-related fame) and exchanged correspondence with Ms. Currie, I have the paperwork to prove it.

As noted, one of Mrs. Clinton's main backers here is the dictator of the New York City Council, Christine Quinn. Quinn, as a major ingredient in what I call the Quinnberg Administration, along with the mega-billionaire mayor, is deeply responsible for the worsening of the housing crisis in New York. While homelessness worsens, the City continues to give away millions to the developers in the form of tax abatements.

Barack Obama is hardly a leftist revolutionary. His background (unlike Hillary's an an opportunistic lawyer) is in community organization in the poor neighborhoods of Chicago. Obama was against the Iraq war while Mrs. Clinton was voting to send the sons and daugherts of America's tenants to die in that profit-motivated War.

It is clear that the Clinton Titanic has hit an Obama iceberg. Hillary's effort to rearrange the deck chairs, even with the help of Donald Trump, will do her no good. This empress has no (political) clothes.

I hope that all Democratic tenants vote for Barack Obama on February 5.
Tomsupfrontnews@yahoo.com
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HOW JOHN EDWARDS SHOT HIMSELF IN BOTH FEET IT WASN'T JUST THE $400 HAIRCUT. "HATCH"-ING DEFEAT

UP FRONT News February 1, 2008
Published by Tom Weiss
Editorial Advisor: Willard Whittingham
"The paper that can't be bought and can't be sold."


As many readers of UP FRONT News are aware, I was an early supporter of John Edwards. Responding to his message directed at making domestic poverty a priority campaign issue, I did some volunteer work for him when he ran for president in 2004. Indeed I was directly involved in setting up a debate at the Peter's Place drop-in center for homeless people featuring Edwards' representative Terence Tolbert against John Kerry's sister Greenwich Village resident Peggy Kerry. Tolbert "won" the debate easily.

Some months later, when I was trying to locate Mr. Tolbert, I learned that he was no longer associated politically with Mr. Edwards and was working in a political capacity for Michael Bloomberg. Strange bedfellows? Maybe. Indeed when I spoke to Mr. Edwards when he came to New York in 2005 to campaign for Democratic mayoral candidate Fernando Ferrer, and urged him to consider running again for the presidency, I also told him that Mr. Tolbert was working for Bloomberg, something that apparently came as a surprise to Mr. Edwards.

In any event, among my important political links to Mr. Edwards for a long time has been Steven Gradman, a college professor of political science who for many years has been the organizer of the NYC Edwards meetup. When I first discussed my plans to run for the U.S. Senate against the Republicrat Hillary Clinton, his initial reaction was "Oh, she's not so bad."

Quite appparently I was able to convince Mr. Gradman that Mrs. Clinton is not merely a recurrently lapsed liberal but that in fact, her rhetoric notwithstanding, she shares much politically and even characterologically with George W. Bush, and when it comes to Machia- vellian politics, Big Dick Cheney. Mr. Gradman is an authentic progressive with a strong commitment to human rights and is an active environmentalist. He is well known in progres- sive Democratic Party circles in New York.

And so I was very gratified when Steven Gradman agreed to serve as the volunteer Media Coordinator for my Democratic write-in campaign for the U.S. Senate, even as he continued to run the Edwards NYC meetups. Mr. Gradman assisted me in arranging speaking appearances for me with some Democratic clubs. I usually followed his political advice, which is based not only in a sound progressive base but also on much knowledge of the personalities involved in New York politics.

Mr. Gradman sometimes found himself in uncomfortable political positions, particularly with the emergence of a pseudo-"liberal' Senate candidate named Jonathan Tasini, who entered the race long after I did. It soon became apparent that Tasini was one of a number of "left" New York political activists (many associated with the almost lily-white Green Party) who are connected to the political extremist Lyndon H. laRouche, Jr. and his local surrogates such as the African-American racist Lenora Fulani and the Jewish racist and cult leader "Dr." Fred Newman. for more on all this, visit http://www.tomweissdemocratforussenate.blogspot.com/,
http://www.tomsupfrontnews.blogspot.com/ and http://www.dennisking.org/. Tasini's chances of beating Hilllary Clinton were not much better than Geoffrey Blank's or, in that spirit, Saddam Hussein's. Tasini's purpose in running was to pull as many votes away as possible from me. He could do that by virtue of the fact that he had some things that I did not. He had some money (enabling him to pay some partially indentured servants to circulate pettions for him to get on the ballot for the Democratic primary. And he had the backing of the local LaRouche fifth columnists.

LaRouche, a conviced felon, is a registered Democrat who lives in Loudon County (Leesburg) Virginia with his wife Helga Zepp-LaRouche in a Hitler-style fortified compound known as the Ibikus Farm. He claims to live on Social Security but, even allowing for the years he spent in a couple of federal penitentiaries after his conviction for mail fraud, he is very, very rich and lives off of all sorts of ill-gotten gains. His crypto-fascist influence, which infects both major political parties, extends deep into New York via the activities of surrogates such as Fulani, Newman, Blank, Democrat Charles Lenchner, and Green Party tapeworms such as Paul Zulkowitz, Gerald Kann, and George Tatevosyan as well as other threat-generating operatives like Les Jamieson (of "9/11 Truth") and Gary Phaneuf, aka the Staten Island Stalker.

Tasini responded to my candicacy by generating a series of LaRouche/Geoffrey Blank-style threats and other criminal harassments against me, all of which have been reported to the appropriate law enforcement authorities on local and federal levels. Those harassments were perpetrated on behalf of the "Mr. Magoo"-resembling Tasini by people such as LaRoucheite Lenchner and a woman named Tracy Denton, who comes out out of the Howard Dean hierarchy but acts like a LaRouche-ite. she is among those who helped civil rights lawyer Norman Siegel lose his races to become NYC Public Advocate with her lily-white gentrified approach to organizing and fundraising. Denton once tried to have me arrested at the endorsement meeting of Democracy for New York City, the local branch of Dean's Democracy for America. Ms. Denton's notion of "democracy" has much in common with the "people's democracies" that prevailed in Eastern Europe from 1945 until the collapse of that great "democracy" known as the Soviet Union.

Witnessing some of these harassments, as well as those against me that took place in the LaRouche/Fulani-run "Green" Ralph Nader meetups was a guy named Charles Riggs III, a well known liberal Democratic Party activist who has a high level job on the Brian Williams "Nightly News" program at NBC. Riggs, who for a while was a Tasini backer, has a disturbing pattern of not responding to newsworthy e-mails from me such as those relating to the Chinese Communist Genocide in Tibet and the very related matter of opposition to the Beijing Olympics. Could this be because of the fact that the cash cow of the Olympics are to be broadcast by NBC? I think so. Riggs is covering up for his corporate employer.

Unfortunately John Edwards did the same thing. Although I received a number of explicit assurances from Mr. Edwards, mostly through a number of his high-level campaign aides, that he would at least comment on the Tibet and Olympic Games matter, it never happened. Indeed, it became necessary for me on one occasion, with my usually precise timing, to publicly remind him about Tibet in front of several hundred people at one of his fundraising talks at "Strata" in Manhattan. Mr. Edwards was visibly displeased.

He never responded to my e-mailed questions as to whether he has investments in the hedge fund known as "Communist" China.

He also refused to respond to my questions about what was LaRouche-ite Charles Lench-ner doing in his campaign as I had learned from Mr. Gradman.

One of the major reasons why Edwards' once potent campaign wound up popular support-wise something like Rudolph Giuliani's is because of a New York political operator named Peter Hatch. Hatch is connected to a patronage-obsessed "liberal" operation known as the Working Families Party, essentially a populism-spewing machine run as a de facto money generating dictatorship by Dan Cantor. Mr. Gradman knows the details of how the WFP iced my Senatorial candidacy in true Carmine DeSapio (New York)/Richard Daley (Chicago) style and in fact, realizing Tasini's insurmountable deficits charisma and issue-wise, endorsed Hillary Clinton for the Senate.

One of John Edwards' biggest political mistakes was listening to people like Peter hatch and surrendering New York to Hillary Clinton.

Barack Obama did not make the same mistake and that is why he may become president and why John Edwards, if he is lucky, could wind up at best as Obama's running mate. And in any case, should Senator Obama win the Democratic nomination, he would to a lot better by picking John Edwards as his running mate than by snatching defeat from the jaws of victory against the Republicans by making a politically fatal error and selecting Hillary Clinton.
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CITY COUNCILMAN AND MAYORAL CANDIDATE TONY AVELLA TAKES ON THE CORPORATIONS - FROM THE LOWER EAST SIDE; TO STAPLETON, STATEN ISLAND;

UP FRONT News January 29, 2008
Published by Tom Weiss
Editorial Advisor: Willard Whittingham
"The paper that can't be bought and can't be sold."

CITY COUNCILMAN AND MAYORAL CANDIDATE TONY AVELLA TAKES ON THE CORPORATIONS - FROM THE LOWER EAST SIDE; TO STAPLETON, STATEN ISLAND;
TO BEIJING, CHINA. DAVID AND GOLIATH REDUX?

Some months ago, at meetings of the hopefully still surviving Union of New York Tenants
(UNYTE) as we were planning a large public meeting (which hasn't happened - yet), the UNYTE "core group" was discussing which elected officials to invite as speakers. I suggested City Councilman Tony Avella, a politician that others in the group were marginally aware of at the time.

Since I have been acquainted with Mr. Avella for some time, I was in a position to describe him as perhaps the most outspoken advocate for tenant rights in the City Council. I had first met Mr. Avella last year when I came to City Hall to testify at a City Council hearing against Intro. 458, a bill introduced by City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. That bill, which not at all surprisingly passed overwhelmingly, permitted the City Council to substantially raise its own salaries and those of a bunch of already overpaid Bloomberg aides. In keeping with Ms. Quinn's practice of government by secrecy, there was almost no advance publicity about the hearing, which I learned about on the Staten Island Ferry from an inner page story in the Daily News.

It was my opinion that, in a poverty-riddled city, with thousdands of people homeless for lack of money, and with some City workers so poorly paid that they have to rely in Food Stamps and food pantries, a raise for already very well paid City Councilmembers, most with major outside incomes, not to speak of extra taxpayer-financed cash in the form of "lulus", a salary increase for the Council was ethically indefensible.

It is not hard to recall Speaker Quinn in her elevated throne-like seat overlooking the Council fixing me with her increasingly trademark icy stare as I got up to testify.

Although he was not on the committee holding the hearing, City Councilman Avella came to testify against Intro. 458. His reasons for opposing this self-congratulatory ripoff of New Yorkers were similar to mine. At the end of the hearing I went over to Mr. Avella and introduced myself and that was, evoking "Casablanca", the beginning of what may become, a beautiful friendship - in the political sense.

I have since spent a considerable amount of time with Mr. Avella and did what seems to be the first in depth interview with him in connection with his seriously under-reported candidacy for Mayor of New York City. That interiview took place several months ago in a pizza place a short distance from his district office in Bayside Queens. there are several articles about Mr. Avella in UP FRONT News at http://www.tomsupfrontnews.blogspot.com/.

When I learned that Mr. Avella is the Chairman of the City Council Committee on Zoning & Franchises, the Lower East Side immediately came to mind. Mr. Avella, being from Queens, has some familiarity with the zoning related anti-gentrification, anti-bar prolilferation, anti-over-development struggles in the LES but was unaware of many of the details and person-alities involved. I told him of the efforts of people like Monte Schapiro, beleaguered by a landlord named Shaoul, and musician-activist Rebecca Moore, founder of the Ludlow-Orchard Community Organization (LOCO), among others. I of course also told him that my neighborhood of Stapleton, Staten Island, still working class in character, is very much in the crosshairs of the real estare predators who see a goldmine of profiteering oppotunities in for example the acreage at the Homeport naval base a very short distance from my home.

Stapleton is a low rise community and intends to sta that way. I for one will do what is necessary to see to it that Bay Street does not evolve like Houston Street in Manhattan. And while Bay Street is nothing like the bar and nightclub-saturated Ludlow Street, it is becoming increasingly easy to get bar-intoxicated along this thoroughfare. The Mayor and his ally Quinn have let it be known that they want to Manhattanize especially the increasingly '"hot" north shore of Staten Island, which includes Stapleton.

When I first met at length with Mr. Avella he immediately made it clear to me that he was ready to meet with gentrification and proliferation-threatened Lower East Siders; I com- municated that information accordingly in various ways, including in UNYTE. The UNYTE group, beset with various organizational problems, never did get around to the big meeting and so the recommended invitation never happened. I am glad, however, that LES activist Rob Hollander, a UNYTE original, who somewhat selectively publicized the January 28 meeting of the Bowery Alliance of Neighbors at the JASA residence on East 5th Street with Mr. Avella as guest speaker, had the chance to experience this councilman.

At the BAN meeting Mr. Avella spoke about his bill, Intro. 6, which has as its purpose the amending of the building code in order "...to prohibit the issuance of permits for construction which is not in compliance with a pending rezoning proposal once the Department of City Planning has formally voted and approved of such proposal." In effect the bill would impose a moratorium on such construction until the full City Council has voted on the related rezoning proposal.

Mr. Avella released a copy of his November 1, 2007 letter on the rezoning problems, especially those involving the euphemism known as "community facilties", sent to Mayor Bloomberg, Speaker Quinn and Amanda Burden, the Commissioner of the Department of City Planning. Ms. Burden's reply was described by Mr. Avella as evasive. He said that he was not at all surprised to get no response from Bloomberg and Quinn. As Mr. Avella knows, I have had the same experience with both of these (s)elected officials. Ms. Quinn has a Marie Antoinette concept of government. "Let them eat cake"- or perhaps something less tasty.

Mr. Avella said that overdevelopment is a major threat to the viability of New York City's communities and that it must be stopped. He states openly that Michael Bloomberg and Christine Quinn, and some City Councilmembers, are allies of the real estate industry. That is a major reason why he is running for mayor.

He talked only briefly about his candidacy, stating that other likely candidates, including City Comptroller Richard Thompson, Ms. Quinn and U.S. Congressman Anthony D. Weiner (D.-Queens/Bklyn.) have already raised seven figure amounts in campaign contributions, which, when it comes to cash from the real estate indusry, is a form of legalized bribery. Quinn is cleaning up. Avella is bringing up the rear cash-wise and at the end of the meeting handed out his Tony Avella 2009 campaign contribution form.

Mr. Avella stressed the importance of organizing "from the bottom up." With that language he sounded like a pre-Green Party Ralph Nader.

Unlike the scripted and tightly controlled public sessions employed by the machine politicians Mr. Avella took questions from all as room use time permitted. In response to a question asked by me, Mr. Avella said he would look into possible strengthening the tenant protections in the anti-harassment bill Intro. 627 introduced by City Councilman Daniel Garodnick (D.-Manh.) That bill was the subject of a December 17, 2007 City Council hearing that, among many others, Mr. Schapiro and I testified at, urging significant strengtening amendments.

Mr. Avella describes the City Council under the rule of Speaker Quinn as a "dictatorship." He made it clear that Ms. Quinn sees herself as having the right to determine what the Council may and may not vote on - and the public be damned.

Some months ago Mr. Avella and I met on another major human rights issue that, while international in character, is a tenants rights issue. It was in a tenants rights internet newsletter some months ago that I learned that over 2 million people have been displaced in Beijing, China in preparation for the 2008 Olympic Games. The tsunami of mega-corporate development in totalitarian "Communist" China exceeds even New York City's excesses.

During my discussion with Mr. Avella I told him that development-crazy Chinese regime is also a perpetrator of Genocide, with the most prolonged case being the now over 1/2 century old occupation of Tibet, an issue that I have been involved with for years. All poliitical leaders would do well to not only be polite to the Dalai Lama (as Bush has been) but to follow his urgings that poverty and homelessness are "unfair" and that war is obsolete.

I told Mr. Avella that in 2001, after I did a lot of lobbying, City Councilmember Quinn took the credit for introducing Intro. 802, which denounced Communist China for its actions in Tibet. That resolution, which passed unanimously, however, had no effect. Why? Because it made no mention of the money issue which is the cash cow known as the Olympic Games.

Ms. Quinn has since ignored repeated requests by me, including a January 30, 2006 e-mail to her via her Chief of Staff Chuck Meara, to introduce another Tibet resolution including a call for the removal of the 2008 Olympic Games from China. (The Chinese regime is also being exposed for aiding and abetting the Genocide in Darfur in its pursuit of Sudanese oil.)

Tony Avella, quickly realizing what is at stake here, soon informed me that he is ready to act. He has since met with me and several members of the Board of Directors of the U.S. Tibet Committee. At Mr. Avella's request, we have submitted a proposed draft resolution.
Mr. Avella made a few minor language changes and on December 20, 2007 submitted his proposed resolution to the Council's draft committee. According to the Council's rules, the resolution should be ready for Council consideration within 60 days of submission.

Mr. Avella anticipates the possibility of obstructionism from Quinn. Quinn is a close political ally of Hillary Clinton, who is in fact an economic ally of the government of China, where the Clintons and people like Rupert Murdoch and the real esate titans make gazillions. Tony Avella has assured me that he doesn't care what Quinn tries to do to his Tibet resolution because he is ready for a fight.

Tony Avella has shown that he is ready to take on entrenched interests in his defense of very oppressed horses in Central Park.

I think he can be counted on to take on the big boys and girls of real estate and their friends in politics.
Tomsupfrontnews@yahoo.com
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