If you think Giuliani MIGHT not be worse than B*sh.. read this:

[annabanana]

I lived there then. I knew a lot of struggling musicians who relied on cash in the street to eat and pay for shelter..people who drew chalk portraits or sold crafts. .

'Giuliani Time': Just When You Thought You Knew How Evil He Is

http://www.alternet.org/rights/69409/?page=1

"Peddlers, panhandlers and prostitutes, they all need to be cleaned out ." The first time I heard Rudy Giuliani speak was on a NBC nightly news broadcast. It was 1996. I was living in Oakland, Calif., at the time -- 3,000 miles away from Manhattan, where, as mayor, Giuliani was implementing his "clean-up campaign." But the sting of his speech still scared me

It was the first time I had heard hygienic metaphors to describe poor people like me who were surviving in an underground street-based economy. Rudy Giuliani had become mayor of New York City on a campaign that constructed a new scapegoat for all of America's crime problems: "the squeegee man" (aka a person who cleans car windows at stop lights).

~snip~

All of these memories came to me as I watched the little-seen but important documentary Giuliani Time. The two-hour-and-20-minute feature, produced and directed by Kevin Keating, uses a series of in-depth interviews with policy makers, advocates, sociologists and urban planners to reveal how Giuliani's policies during his reign from 1994-2001 led to extreme and dangerous police empowerment and subsequent decimation of human and civil rights of poor people and communities of color. The film shows how he created a template for criminalization that would be eventually emulated and implemented by mayors across the country -- from Atlanta to San Francisco.

~snip~

His welfare policies succeeded in making Giuliani the mayor best known for getting 600,000 welfare recipients off welfare and into a new form of slavery, "workfare." Workfare, is the hard labor (that isn't considered real work by the welfare system and most of society for that matter) one must do to get the minimal cash aid distributed by welfare. This includes doing previously union-held jobs like crack-of-dawn street sweeping and public restroom cleaning, and other forms of menial labor, for much less than minimum wage.

[sam sarrha]

1. one of the elements of Fascism is that they view the POVERTY that THEY create as a choice and a VICE

[boobooday]

2. That's right

Because you know the people who can't afford >$100k for cancer treatment just spent their money on lottery tickets and big screen tvs instead. It's their own damn fault.

[C_U_L8R]

3. work will make you free

has a hauntingly familiar ring to it

[Vinca]

4. And now it's a crime to feed the hungry in some cities. nt

[mmonk]

5. A Giuliani presidency must be avoided at all costs

or I'm outta here.

[TreasonousBastard]

10. If we get him, you'll be SENT outta here. We all will.

[no_hypocrisy]

6. The "workfare" program was the brainchild of Jason Turner who did the same

thing in Wisconsin. And Giuliani loved it. If you were collecting welfare and the City was paying for your childs in daycare, your benefits were dependent upon picking up garbage in the parks for example. The City agency chose your hours. And if you were trying to get OFF assistance, you were stuck because the hours were when you would be taking a course or two and maybe hours the daycare was closed, so the little money coming in went to pay for child care. You ended up being trapped in the system with Giuliani's plan to get welfare recipients reduced on paper.

[annabanana]

11. It really is slave labor. Just how

is a person going to find the time to improve their situation when they are run form pillar to post all day like this?

[TreasonousBastard]

7. You werre there, too? Remember what he did to City Hall...

the City Hall where Koch used to have weekly, sometimes daily doings on the steps and it was the "Peoples' Hall?"

The City Hall where you could take sandwich into the park and nobody would bother you. And nobody would bother the juggler who stopped by you, hoping you'd drop him a buck....

Long before 9/11 that sumbitch walled off City Hall and turned it into an armed camp. Imagine what he'd do to the country.

PS...

"Annabanana" -- does the term "wrevel" mean anything to you?

[annabanana]

8. I was there. He took a public park and turned it into a

military compound. It was ugly and scary. My busker friends were chased and arrested and ended up living in other peoples livingrooms. Music and Art and Dance were gone from NYC streets. It was a sad place.

(sorry, "wrevel" doesn't "w"ring a bell)

[TreasonousBastard]

9. Besides lolling around in the park during lunch hour...

watching the streetshow, we waited for the Mayors to hold ceremonies on the steps. One day Koch was giving the "Key to the City" to Dolly Parton (he was a big Country fan, at least when Country singers were around) and Dolly surprised us all when a couple of sidemen popped up and she did a half hour set. Koch was like to plotz-- he was in his element with Dolly Parton and a few hundred citizens having a good time.

Used to see him run across Park Row to his favorite restaurant, too. "How'm I doin?"

Koch had his problems, like race relations weren't exactly his thing, but he was the most gregarious in a history of gregarious Mayors who tried to make the city fun. Who knew then what that miserable excuse Rudy would do to the place...

(Musta been another Annabanana)