Demonstration Against New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani

Demonstration Against New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani

"Ghouliani, Racist," "Giuliani=Racist Police," "A corporate stooge and fascist for crimes against constitution and civil rights violations," these are some of the outcries that can be seen lifted towards the skies against former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. This image captures a demonstration in Chinatown that happened in March 1999 where 21 immigrant vendors, along with allies, protested against their eviction from Dragon Gate Market. The vendors were only able to resist for two months until the City Parks Department, who determined them to be unprofitable, came in with bulldozers and demolished their stalls, fruits of a lifetime of savings for most of them, effectively removing them. Such an event resulted from Giuliani's action against this community that was considered an obstacle towards his goal of privatizing public spaces and restructuring the vending industry into a leasing system[1].

The latter was only one of the many components of the "revanchist"[2] policies implemented from 1994 to 2001 during Giuliani's term. "Quality of life" was the title of his policing campaign that seemingly intended to improve the lives of all New Yorkers. It was built upon criminologists James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling's "Broken Window Theory," which argues that disorderly conduct will eventually culminate in bigger crimes[3]. In implementing this theory, Giuliani decided that the quality of life in New York City could be improved by targeting minor offenses to prevent greater ones. The results were targeted and violent measures of social control, the prioritization of private businesses, who received even more power than they already had from the government, and the trumping of civil rights of low-income people of color, immigrants, and other groups.

Consequently, all of CAAAV's communities directly suffered the repercussions that manifested from“broken windows policing” in the form of police brutality, police homicides of people of color, the loss of free quality education, record unemployment and substandard employment, the lack of safety net for homeless and unemployed, the criminalization of public and market spaces, inadequate housing, and poor health care. The ghoul that is systematic racism now had Giuliani's face, and it was disguised under the moniker of "Quality of Life." That being said, CAAAV has been helping and defending Asian Americans against this monster since 1986, and that time it was no different. Through the mobilization of their different programs, CAAAV divided to counterattack the ghoul. For instance, the Racial Justice Committee advocated for police brutality survivors and organized youths to battle racist law enforcement in Chinatown. For its part, the Youth Leadership Program campaigned against the corporatization of health care for the poor, coordinated community events, and organized southeast Asian workfare mothers. Finally, the Women Workers Projects focused on Asian immigrant women who worked in the informal sector, offering them legal advocacy and English classes. Organized effort was and is CAAAV's main weapon. While the war against the ghoul, who since then has had other faces and disguises, continues, they remain unwavering, becoming stronger and wiser for and thanks to the Asian American communities they serve.

Notes

1. “Community Organizing,” The CAAAV Voice 10 10, no. 3 (1999): pp. 7-8, 7.

2. Vivian Truong, “From State-Sanctioned Removal to the Right to the City: The Policing of Asian Immigrants in Southern Brooklyn, 1987–1995,” Journal of Asian American Studies 23, no. 1 (2020): pp. 61-92, 71.

3. Ibid.

March 1999

Camila Aguirre, Written by Camila Aguirre Sarubbi

This was completed as coursework for HIST-GA 3901 Community Archives, taught by Maggie Schreiner, in the Archives and Public History MA program at New York University.

Copyright is held by CAAAV Organizing Asian Communities.

Photograph

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