Giuliani"s Unwelcome Birthday Guests

The New York Observer ^ | 5/29/07 | Azi Paybarah

[SUSSA]

Here’s an unwelcome birthday gift for Rudy Giuliani, as he travels around the city raising money: protests from fire fighters and family members of September 11th victims.

They've shown up in the past at Giuliani's presidential events. Today, they’re gathering in Bay Ridge, and they have plans to follow him nationwide starting sometime around January, according to Jim Riches, a deputy chief with the fire department whose son was killed in the World Trade Center attacks.

“We have all the UFA, the UFOA, and the fire members are all behind us -- the International Association of Fire Fighters,” said Riches. “And we’re going to be out there today to let everybody know that he’s not the hero that he says he is.”

The group’s complaints center on the faulty radios used by the fire department that day and what they say was a lack of coordination at Ground Zero.

And Riches disputes the notion that Giuliani provided any form of leadership on September 11 or in the days following.

“If somebody can tell me what he did on 9/11 that was so good, I’d love to hear it. All he did was give information on the TV”

“He did nothing,” Riches continued. “He stood there with a TV reporter and told everyone what was going on. And he got it from everybody else down at the site.”

[SUSSA]

You said “Trust me the Union does not endorse the same candidates the rank and file would. In actuality, the firefighters don’t have much to say about it.”

The Union backed Bush so if they “do not endorse the same canditates the rank and file would” who would the rank and file have endorsed?

As pointed out to another poster, Battalion Chief Riches isn’t a union boss. Nor are most of the firefighters who are ready to get the real story about Rudy out to the voters.

Just because the union leadership happens to agree with the membership doesn’t make the members wrong. Nor does it mean that the members are blindly following the union leadership.

It was Battalion Chief Riches and the other firefighters who were on the ground on 9-11 who started the movement to Swift Boat Rudy, not the union bosses.

I can understand being suspicious of the leadership since they backed Bush twice, but they really didn’t have much choice either time. It seems to have been they went with the lesser of two evils rather than any deep liberal bias.

Now it seems the union leaders are backing their members (the real heroes of 9-11) in the effort to Swift Boat Rudy and I’m all for them.

If the firefighters start raising money to Swift Boat him I’ll contribute just like I did to the vets who Swift Boated Kerry.

I didn’t turn against Reagan because the Teamsters union supported him with money and workers. I see no reason to turn against the firefighters just because they got their union to support their effort to Swift Boat Rudy.

[sheana]

sheesh, I wasn’t talking about this specifically.
My husband was/still is the member of a firefighters union.....35 yrs now.
The Union does very little that he or anyone else actually agrees with politically.
I was just stating that the members really have no input into what the Union leaders do politically.