Posted on 03/01/2017 1:58:29 PM PST by doug from upland
January 12, 2006, 2:20 pm
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Charles Schumer trying to tar Samuel Alito as a racist because of membership in some club? Don’t make me laugh. The fact is that Charles Schumer came to power as a New York State Assemblyman in 1974 by virtue of an overtly racist scheme that he created and sold to a naive neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. He convinced them that he would use his power to rid their area of black people. And who is my source for this serious accusation? Me.
Yes, me. I was there.
“My sin I recall today…” It has been my decision, a very conflicted one to be sure, not to publish this information these past many years. My silence was motivated by my loyalty to my former neighbors, who went along with this nefarious stratagem. In the end, the plan did not come to fruition, either because Schumer tried unsuccessfully, or because the whole thing was a con on his part to gull gullible voters. A skilled researcher might do well to check the Assembly archives to see if he actually laid the groundwork for the plan.
Here is the background. The Flatbush section of Brooklyn includes a subsection known as Midwood. This stretches from E. 1st Street on the west to E. 35th Street on the east, from a southernmost point at Ave. U to Ave. H on the north. This entire segment is populated by whites, mostly Italians and Jews, with a recent influx of Slavic immigrants. Right smack dab in the middle of this box is a series of apartment houses on Avenue K, from E. 12th to E. 15th Street, whose tenants are almost 100% black.
There existed (and to an extent still exists) a fear, perhaps a paranoia, that this cluster of black people in the heart of the neighborhood was rendering it “unsafe.” Although I do not recall any publicized cases of robberies or other crimes occurring around those buildings, there was a strong perception that this represented a pocket of criminality in the midst of this otherwise mild-mannered urban conclave. It always struck me as a silly bit of mythology; I used to play basketball in the public parks with the fellows who lived there and did not find them particularly threatening.
Then the word went out that there was a plan to evict all the blacks. A local political kingmaker set up a round of meetings with community groups to introduce them to a recent Harvard grad, Charles Schumer, who had fashioned a solution to this nagging problem. Although I was only 16 years old at the time, I was entering Brooklyn College and had long been a confirmed political junkie. Being that young, I was more or less invisible to the adults who were engaged in these momentous matters, so I was able to slip into one of these sessions unhampered.
What Schumer explained to these audiences was as follows. If they elected him to the State Assembly, he would put forth a bill that would create a set of provisions, ostensibly to “help” the underprivileged urban blacks. It would identify those apartment buildings on Ave. K as being in a state of some dilapidation, requiring an extensive facelift and revamping of the apartments. I don’t recollect with certainty if ownership would be assumed by the State itself or one of those “community rehabilitation organizations” that served as the instrument of choice for soaking up large sums of government money for the stated purpose of redeveloping slums.
The residents would then all be relocated into government or government-subsidized housing in other areas while the apartments were being renovated. At the end of the process, the individual apartments would be redefined as co-ops or condominiums to be sold to private owners. Although on paper the current tenants would be given priority for the right to purchase the newly upgraded condos, we could be sure that — ha, ha, ha — the blacks would not be able to raise the cash required, which would be not inconsiderable.
The presumption was that by then they would have grown comfortable in their new surroundings and they would not feel victimized by the process. The refurbished apartments would be purchased by white people and, shazzam, the neighborhood sore spot would be fixed. I am ashamed to say that the people bought into this mean-spirited and racist proposition. On top of its other faults the idea was also chimerical, with no real chance of working in the political reality of our time.
In the end, construction was done on those buildings through some sort of government project, but all the black people remained. Naturally no one could complain, because their original intent was not something that could be publicized. So there it is, the inside scoop on how Charles Schumer, the patron saint of anti-racism, rose to power in a Brooklyn neighborhood.
I was there, friends; this is not hearsay. And now you know… the rest of the story.
Jay D. Homnick is a columnist for JewishWorldReview.com and a contributor to the Reform Club.
My friend, you are completely correct, but it goes back even before that. I was a Viet Nam Veteran returning from injuries in 1971. I went through Hayden, Slapped Hanoi Jane, (enjoyed it) and the scumbag himself Jerry Moonbeam” Brown. After me surgeries and recovery from my injuries, I was allow to go home to Brooklyn, NY. I was given special notice for my actions, when Chuck “the effing schmuck” Schumer started by calling me a murderer and scumbag for fighting in Nam. I hauled off and belted him in the face. The federal Marshal’s there did nothing but protect me from the leftist BASTARD. He hasn’t changed at all!! remember people, he is a Anti-American BASTARD! ALWAYS WAS, ALWAYS WILL BE!!!!!
Thanks, Doug, I didn’t see this when it came out.
Thanks for sharing your encounter with us.
Bkmk
bfl
One other thing I need to get off my chest. I do not consider Schumer a democrat. In all actuality there is no longer a Democrat or a Republican Party. They have been taken over by the political elitists whose only concern is their own power and money they get from the lobby’s that support them and the money they steal from us. Remember people, these scumbags have been in office for DECADE’S.
Weiner – Schumer’s Political Protege’:
TUESDAY, JUN 7, 2011 13:24 ET
WAR ROOM
The dirty trick that launched Anthony Weiner’s career
BY STEVE KORNACKI
The dirty trick that launched Anthony Weiner’s career
You can certainly make a compelling case that Anthony Weiner should not have to give up his seat in Congress or his career in elected politics because of the online photo scandal that has engulfed him this week.
But if this does end up being the end for Weiner’s public career, it might not be quite the injustice it seems like — at least if you know how his career began.
Twenty years ago, Weiner was a young aide to an ambitious, still somewhat obscure Brooklyn congressman named Charles Schumer. After working in Washington for a few years, he’d been dispatched to Sheepshead Bay to run Schumer’s local office. It was Schumer’s idea; Weiner had told him that he wanted to enter politics and was considering moving to Florida, where the 1990 census would soon produce several new congressional seats in areas where a New York transplant with the name Weiner could probably do well. Schumer said he was better off returning to Brooklyn, where Weiner was from originally, and establishing himself there.
Weiner’s opening came in 1991, when the City Council was radically expanded, from 35 to 51 seats. One of the new districts, the 48th, would be in Southern Brooklyn. It was a neat match for Weiner. The new seat was in the heart of Schumer’s district, there was no incumbent, and the population was heavily Jewish. He jumped in the race.
He was not the favorite. Two other candidates with more name recognition, deeper ties to the community, stronger organizational support, and bigger bankrolls seemed to have the inside track: Michael Garson (the candidate of the Brooklyn Democratic organization) and Adele Cohen (the favorite of a progressive/labor coalition that backed candidates across the city in ‘91). It was a low-profile race, but Weiner attracted positive reviews, aggressively campaigning and using his performer’s flair to steal the show at debates and candidate forums. But as the all-important Sept. 10 Democratic primary approached, the consensus was that he’d come up short and that, as Newsday put it in an editorial endorsing one of his opponents, he should “try again next time.”
It was at this point that Weiner’s campaign decided to blanket the district with leaflets attacking his opponents. But these were no ordinary campaign attacks: They played the race card, and at a very sensitive time. They were also anonymous.
Just weeks earlier, the Crown Heights riot — a deadly, days-long affair that brought to the surface long-standing tension between the area’s black and Jewish populations — had played out a few miles away from the 48th District. The episode had gripped all of New York and had been national news. It was just days after order had been restored that Weiner’s campaign distributed its anonymous leaflets, which linked Cohen — whose voters he was targeting in particular — to Jesse Jackson and David Dinkins, who was then New York’s mayor. It is hard to imagine two more-hated political figures in the 48th District at that moment. Jackson just a few years earlier had called New York “Hymie town,” and it was an article of faith among white voters in Weiner’s part of Brooklyn that Dinkins had protected the black rioters in Crown Heights — and thus endangered the white population — by refusing to order a harsh police crackdown. (Two years later, Dinkins would lose to Rudy Giuliani by an 80-20 percent margin in the 48th District.) The leaflets urged voters to “just say no” to the “Jackson-Dinkins agenda” that Cohen supposedly represented. At City Hall, Dinkins held up the flier and branded it “hateful.”
It’s impossible to say what precise effect this all had on the election, but it clearly didn’t hurt Weiner. In a surprise result, he finished in first place — 125 votes ahead of Garson, and 195 ahead of Cohen. Only after the ballots were counted did he admit that he’d been behind the leaflets, claiming that “We didn’t want the source to be confused with the message.” This prompted an editorial rebuke from the New York Times, which noted that “Mr. Weiner’s hit-and-run tactics tarnish his come-from-behind campaign.”
Not that it mattered. The primary was over and Weiner had won. The general election was a formality, and months later he became the youngest City Council member in New York history. Seven years after that, he parlayed his Council spot into a seat in Congress, and you know the story from there. But who knows where Weiner would be today if he hadn’t made such a dark appeal to racial hostility days after a notorious riot?
It’s something worth keeping in mind now, as Weiner’s career hangs in the balance. Is it unfair if he loses his political future because of a scandal as dumb as this one? Sure. But it’s also not exactly fair that he ever made it this far.
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