{ title: 'The villager. (New York [N.Y.]) 1933-current, May 09, 1985, Page 4, Image 4', download_links: [ { link: 'http://www.loc.gov/rss/ndnp/ndnp.xml', label: 'application/rss+xml', meta: 'News about NYS Historic Newspapers - RSS Feed', }, { link: '/lccn/sn83030608/1985-05-09/ed-1/seq-4/png/', label: 'image/png', meta: '', }, { link: '/lccn/sn83030608/1985-05-09/ed-1/seq-4.pdf', label: 'application/pdf', meta: '', }, { link: '/lccn/sn83030608/1985-05-09/ed-1/seq-4/ocr.xml', label: 'application/xml', meta: '', }, { link: '/lccn/sn83030608/1985-05-09/ed-1/seq-4/ocr.txt', label: 'text/plain', meta: '', }, ] }
Image provided by: Jefferson Market Library
w m . rr M. Club Greitzer Helped Found Turns Its Back on Her: Dem Club Endorses Bellamy, Dinkins and Rothenberg BY TIMOTHY-McDARRAH ''Imagine a Brooklyn kid finally getting the endorsement from the VID,” said a beaming Carol Bellamy last Thursday night after receiving the powerful downtown club’s en dorsement for mayor. \It's like getting into Stuyvesant High School or something.” In their annual endorsement meeting, which drew almost 500 people on a cold, rainy evening, the Village Independent Democrats also endorsed David Dinkins for Manhattan Borough President, C. Vemon/^Mason for Manhattan District Attorney, and in the two local city council races, overwhelmingly en dorsed incumbent Second District Council- member Miriam Friedlander and turned their back on the four term incumbent in the Third District Carol Greitzer, who helped form the club in 1961, by endorsing her challenger, gay activist David Rothenberg. The closest race of the evening turned out to be the Greitzer-Rothenberg confrontation. Rothenberg won 179-90, almost a 2-1 margin. VID president Rick Braun moderated, and called on several club members to speak in favor of theii'\ favorite candidates. Keith Crandall spoke first in favor of Greitzer. GONE BANANAS He said the club should not \turn our back on someone who has stood for every single issue the VID has ever stood for,” and said the perception of the club would be that \the VID has gone absolutely bananas” if they did not endorse Greitzer. Ed Gold then said that Rothenberg is trying to raise $300,000 for a seat where most people spend $30,000. Female district leader Catherine Abate spoke in favor o{ Rothenberg, saying that the VID had a chance to make history by helping to elect the first openly gay member of the council. She also cited his IB-year involve ment with the Fortune Society, saying that the experience gives him a unique edge in fighting crime. The Fortune Society is the na tion’s most successful convict rehabilitation program. Meredith Boyce, speaking in favor of Greitzer, said that there were \other issues besides AIDS” in the campaign, a reference to Rothenberg’s constant reminders that he is in the forefront of the fight against the disease. Her comment drew boos from the audience, and two speakers, in very emo tional speeches, defended Rothenberg and his insistence to make AIDS a campaign issue. \1 people have already died. That’s an issue,” said one. Greitzer, who was not expecting to receive the club’s endorsement (Male—District Leader Anthony Hoffmann, VID president Braun, VID-backed State Committeeman Jerry Goldfeder and more than 50 club members had already endorsed Rothenberg) was not at the session. Her campaign workers were handing out literature that included newspaper articles from 1971 on Greitzer’s work on a Women’s Prison on Riker’s Island. When asked by ii:' ''W V ' -t, if ' 1‘1 ' W ' •/' Vh\ hecklers if Greitzer had done anything since 1971, one of the workers responded that her recent accomplishments were on the other handout—four paragraphs that summarized her support and work for AIDS and abortion clinic harassment. \The vote at VID primarily reflects changes in the club membership and an in ternal power struggle. Since mem bers of the current leadership ai^ed me to consider run ning for president of the City Council before switching their support to my opponent, my performance was not the issue,” said Greitzer after the endorsement was announc ed. \Their position certainly does not reflect the Greenwich Village community which has given me strong baddng as party and public official for many years based on my activism on behalf of women’s rights, tenant and com- Council challenger David Rothenberg (center In photo left) looks on during pro ceedings. VID president Rick Braun presid ed (Villager/Biggart Photos) munity issues, transit and environmental concerns, gay rights, a nuclear free harbor and the fight against Westway. Because of my long record of accomplishments I fully expect to carry the Village and the rest of my district in the (Sept. 10) prim ary,” she con tinued. Rothenberg said that he was honored by the endorsement and hoped it would prove that he was not a single issue candidate. \This will broaden my activisit constituency base,” said Rothenberg, who has been a member of the club for 15 years. He figures that \the worse I ’ll get from Ruth Messinger and Friedlander,” the other downtown coun- cilmembers, \is a a neutral stance” on his race, which he was was \quite a statement in itself.” Messinger said she might make a decision Continued on Page 7 Reporter 's Notebook: This Review o f the Sixties Sends Them Toward the Exits BY L J . DAVIS Quick, what event last Monday night cost me five bucks and three cigarettes, started forty- five minutes late, was largely inaudible, and was abandoned by half its audience before it was over? No, Walter Mondale did not deliver a major foreign policy address, and the Cleveland I n d ies did not play the Chicago White Sox in an exhibition game; the answer, 1 fear, is infinitely worse. For one long and lustreless moment in the Great Hall in Cooper Union—a moment that, if it had been dropped from an airplane, would still be falling—the 1960s returned. I guess there are some things like the Saturday Review of literature and the guy who wears the hockey mask in \Friday the 13th”, that you just can’t kill But first, before I begin my report (it will be mercifully brief), 1 propose to unburden myself of a sermon. I ’m sure that everyone within the sound of my voice remembers the 1960s; even people who did not, in fact, attend the 1960s seem wonderfully au courant on the subject. I do not, therefore, propose to describe the 1960s yet one more time, thus adding to a body of myth that, in sheer volume, deserves pride of place in the Guineas Book of World Records; in stead, 1 would like to voice an Opinion. As it happens. I ’ve spent a spacious part of the last three months chasing a crazy bunch of neo-Nazis around the Pacific Northwest, an ex ercise that is roughly equivalent to mucking out a bam, except that bams rarely possess firearms. The quest gave the propeller atop my thinking cap a high rate of spin, and I was not long in reaching the conclusion that I was stalking a band of rogue hippies. Like the hip pies of my ilkpent youth, the Nazis desired to live apart from their fellow men, a t one with nature and their surroundings. like hippies, the Nazis were energetic in their denuncktion of the System and touching in their insistence that there actually was s u ^ a thing. And like many h^pies, the Nazis proposed to kill anyone who disagreed with them. PARAGUAYTO TREBUNKA It is true that there were differences. *While the governmental fantasies of the far Right range wildly from Paraguay to Treblinka, the hippie Left has always liankered a fter a kind TwO'Of the Sixties panelists, William Kunts|er and Flo Kennedy compare notes before the prooeedlngs.(N|cholas Wolintz III Photo) of Libya. While Nazis like to think of themselves as mean and strong, hippies are mean and weak. And Nazis, like totalitarian movements since the beginning of time, have never quite figured out how to repeal human nature; hippiedom, unlike any other totalitarian movement in recorded history, did just that, through the judicious use of alkaloids and hallucinogens. One would think, therefore, that hippiedom, having done a certain amount of p r^ably ir reparable damage to the social fabric, would be destined for the ash-heap of history, doomed (like the neo-Nazis) to revive from time to time in the hearts of lunatics and jailbirds, of whom there are mercifully few. Perhaps that is so, but for the time being the authors of the movement are with us yet, as Rudolph Hess and Joseph Mengele a re with us yet, except that the surviving ringleaders of hippiedom do not enjoy guest privileges at Spandau or the run of Asuncion. Indeed, totally unaware of the enormity of their crimes, a good many of them were to be found lined up like ten little Indians (except that there were only six of them) on the stage of the hall where Abraham Lincoln gave his \Right Makes Might” address. SIXTIES WITHOUT APOLOGY Fittingly, the event was sponsored by Social Text m a g a ^ e , a periodical whose devotion to socialism remains undimmed despite the fact that no socialist government anywhere in the world has ever worked properly or, indeed a t all. The title of the event was \The 60s Without Apology,” and it was certainly that; it requires grace to apologize. Present were William Kunstler, the Susan Tipograph of an earlier generation, who spoke movingly of the Strug gle, misquoted Steven Vincent Benet, and sug gested that he had entered his midlife crisis in his forties and had yet to emerge; Richie Havens, who possessed wit but sang two outrageously boring songs; Flo Kennedy, entertaining as always, although someone should tell her that it is impossible to beat a dead horse to death; EUen Willis, who read ex cerpts from either her novel or the Bronx tel^hone bock, it was hard to tell which; Sol Yurick, one of the sweetest human beings in Brooklyn, who nevertheless called for the over throw of, yes, the Systm ; and Stanley Aronowitz, now a professor of sociology, who rousing^ reminded us of Robert Kennedy’s prophecy that he was dooming himself to marginality and then proceeded to dwell lov ingly on 1969, the year he and Jerry Rubin began to stop the war. The present year, I believe, isi 1905. The war still goes on. People die in it even^ day. As they each rose in turn to speak, they seemed to see multitudes, multitudes, mar ching. As indeed they were. It was the au dience, heading for the exits. In the lobby afterwards, I approached a likely-looking lad. During the proceedings, I had heard a wnistle blown; similar whistles had been used to disrupt the V-E Day ceremonies downtown that afternoon, ceremonies commemorating the overthrow of the most appalling regime in history. Could there, I asked, be some connection. \Oh yeah,” he said, borrowing a cigarette. \We went down there, you know, to hassle the Hitler Youth. You know, the West Point cadets.” Wonderful, 1 replied. By the way, did he know that the neo- Nazis out in Idaho believed that drivers’ licenses were instruments of tyrannical oppres sion? \Yeah right,” he said. \That’s exactly what they are.” Then he asked for another cigarette. 1 have always been generous to the poor. I gave him two. May 9 , 198S, THE VILLAGER, Paga 3
