PlanetAlbany

Will cops stop occupation?

The occupiers of Lafayette Park kept quoting this Times Union story about how the state and city were planning to enforce the 11 p.m. curfew, but that time came and went and the news broadcasts went out and Albany police were not much in evidence. They'd done a couple of drive-bys, and for a while a cop car was parked with a fire truck across from City Hall, but they drove off at 11:15. I'd wandered around the edges of the park looking for cops, but found only a couple of state troopers. City cops were key, though, because while the state controls the adjacent Academy Park, Lafayette is city territory.

City Councilman Anton Konev said he thought the cops would let the demonstrators stay -- but didn't have inside information. Congressman Paul Tonko had dropped by earlier, Konev said. Councilwoman Barbara Smith also was there. A Fire Department officer, before driving off around 11:20, said he had no orders about a crackdown -- but that if there was one he'd get a call. I figured the cops weren't coming, and wandered away at 11:40 as the guy that Bee Balm Gal thinks has looks like John Belushi (and has his energy) had gotten a singalong going of "This Land Is Your Land." But as I drove down State Street just west of Eagle I passed by a couple of parked police pickups connected to horse carriers with horses in them, which seemed like an ominous sign.

Before that, at the event, I ran into a Rumi-quoting "socially conscious hip-hop artist," a former middle school principal from Brooklyn, and a guy I know who's a former Weatherman and current environmental lobbyist. When the latter said he wasn't planning to spend the night (about 25 tents had sprung up) I berated him as a capitalist running dog tool of the bourgeoisie, at which point he scurried off saying he had to attend to family and friends and had "things to do." Yet again, it is distressing to discover not everyone appreciates the charm of my abrasive raillery.

McDonald doubles down on social issues

An "LGBT & Pro-Choice Fund Raiser to Support State Senator Roy McDonald" will be held Nov. 9 at the Albany Institute of History and Art. McDonald, who represents parts of Rensselaer and Saratoga counties, was the crucial first Senate Republican to change his position and get gay marriage legalized this year.

McDonald also, according to the Facebook events page put out by longtime activist Libby Post -- whom I first met in 1984 when she ran Ed Bloch's congressional campaign -- is "a staunch supporter of reproductive rights," and "his pro-choice vote can be counted on."

McDonald has been raising funds in Manhattan, too, and will obviously have plenty to spend on his re-election campaign next year. No word yet on whether he will face serious opposition in a Republican primary.

Harriman/high school plan

The Times Union this morning announces another plan to redevelop the Harriman Office Campus, which would involve moving Albany High School there. The current high school would be razed and the campus turned into dorms for UAlbany and the College of Saint Rose, which I suppose might reduce residential problems in the current student ghetto.

One advantage of the plan is that no one will miss the 1970s neo-brutalist look of the current high school, or the undistinguished modern architecture at Harriman -- in stark contrast to the original Albany Academy, still beautiful and functional (now as the school district HQ) after 200 years. Modern architects are still at it, as can be seen from the stupefyingly banal rendering of the proposed SUNY Adirondack building in Wilton on Page B3 of today's TU (no link up).

Unclear to me is how moving the high school ties in with a potential expansion of UAlbany's western campus, which neighbors Harriman, or potential private-sector development at Harriman (a previous plan called for a tech park there), or how many state jobs there would be displaced and whether they would be relocated within the city of Albany. I'm also not certain that it's a good idea to move the high school away from the center of town, although its current neighbors probably wouldn't mind.

Who got ethics?

When he was a full-time Times Union columnist I often found Fred LeBrun dull, but he's blossoming in semi-retirement and yesterday's corker about the yet-to-be appointed Joint Commission on Public Ethics was on the money. Gov. Andrew Cuomo has not yet announced any appointments, and legislative leaders have not announced their nominees. The governor, says LeBrun, "may be the public's darling at the moment, but by nature, he is a micromanager who plays it very close to the vest and insists on absolute loyalty from those around him. Why would we think that his expectations would be any less for those he appoints to the new ethics commission? Believe it or not, there may come a time when Cuomo himself could be on the ethical hot seat. Then what? Another sham?"

That last is a reference to a prior governor, Eliot Spitzer, who got the Legislature to pass a disastrous ethics "reform" which created a Commission on Public Integrity (now abolished under Cuomo). In that reform, LeBrun writes, "Spitzer insisted on appointing the majority of its commissioners, solidifying the perception that it was his. And it was his, inside and out. When the commission was forced to look at that governor's own ethical behavior, as in Troopergate, the result was unsurprisingly a sham."

LeBrun also quotes former Lobbying Commission director David Grandeau, a favorite of journalists because, unlike almost every other ethics board member and enforcer in town, he has been willing to speak the truth and not protect the interests of whoever appointed him. Ethics board members tend to be politically connected lawyers, and act as if the people who appointed them are their clients. Grandeau exposed actions taken by his political godfather, Joe Bruno, that eventually resulted in Bruno's criminal conviction. No wonder the pols combined against Grandeau and, through Spitzer's law, forced him out of office.

Cuomo's new law, at Senate Republican insistence, has protections against political railroading. The Senate's position reflected what a lot of politicians think, which is that an investigator can always find a reason to go after anyone, like a grand jury indicting a ham sandwich (as Sol Wachtler put it). There's something to that, but the larger danger is continuation of Albany politics and corruption as usual.

But now, LeBrun says, "finding commissioners who meet the stringent guidelines won't be easy. It's a thankless enough job to begin with, but anyone who was a registered lobbyist in the past three years or has been or is a state legislator, party chairman, state officer or state employee is ineligible." You also as I recall, can't be a political independent. That makes me eligible, as I recently signed up as a Republican, and have long experience writing about this topic on this blog and previously for newspapers. So gimme a call, guv, or Sen. Skelos, or whoever. The unlikelihood of that happening, of anyone not in the loyalist insider 0.1 percent getting the nod, speaks to the problem.

Occupiers and others at the Capitol (updated)

The TU's Rob Gavin  did a good job covering this afternoon's demo outside the Capitol, though I think he low-balled the crowd some (I'd put it at 200). The event was introduced by NYSUT reps, who before that explained to two state troopers (with one of whom they had previously been in contact) that they were not representing Occupy Albany, although some people were around who were. Most everyone was in support of the movement that has sprung up around the country (maybe the world) from Occupy Wall Street. Also present in Albany was a smorgasbord of other leftist groups from the Socialist Equality Party to anti-frackers, along with lots of antiwar demonstrators (one with a handwritten addition to his printed banner referring to "Barack O'Bombing"). There, too, was the Muslim Solidarity Alliance, which carried a large banner with pictures of the convicted and imprisoned (unjustly in my opinion) faux terrorists from Albany, Yassin Aref and Mohammed Hossain.

NYSUT's Andrew Pallotta decried the imminent demise of the state millionaire's tax, which is certainly a reasonable position. But the time to stand up and save the tax was in March, when the budget was being negotiated, and what actually happened then was that Democrats joined Republicans to prove they are both in Wall Street's pocket -- along with the independent mayor of NYC. (National Democrats have a somewhat better position on taxes.)

One of the dilemmas facing the Occupy movement is whether to go along with every fringe group, some of which make a lot more sense than others, or to stick with kinda boring agendas like NYSUT's. Nor is boring obviously the way to go. Anyone even partly sympathetic can get behind the millionaire's tax, but NYSUT cares a lot more about stopping education vouchers (just as Assembly Democrats cared more about protecting trial lawyers), and the result is that the interest of the "99 percent" is routinely sold out by both parties to special interests.

On the way to the demo, we wandered past the beautiful brownstone former school that is one of the oldest buildings in Albany and the centerpiece of Academy Park. Now the HQ of the hard-pressed city school system, you could see through the basement windows cardboard boxes stacked five-high with decades-old files that nobody -- as said my schoolteacher wife (who would borrow a "NYSUT in solidarity" sign at the rally) -- will ever read. (You can check out the wife's blog post.)

It reminds me of that Elizabeth Warren quote seen all over the liberal Internet, about how no-one gets rich by themselves because we all need public roads, police protection, etc. Fair enough, but it is blindingly obvious that government, even when well intentioned, is not just routinely inefficient but often far from benign -- as can be seen in the spheres of education, welfare, housing, etc., and in the debt-burdened public finances all over the civilized world. The Occupiers recognize governmental failings when it comes to Wall Street and war. But I think the Tea Party's critique remains at least as relevant. While we do need politicians willing to work with each other across party lines, to do sensible things like raise the debt ceiling when to do otherwise invites crisis, that doesn't alter the fact that all those centrist pols seem to have driven the world economy off a cliff.

"Sit in for Solidarity" (updated)

A "Sit in for Solidarity" from 2 to 5 p.m. at the Capitol Saturday is one of four regional events planned for this weekend, according to the Occupy Albany Web site. However, the site links to a Facebook page which says Saturday's event will be at the park on the east side of the Capitol and "is not an occupation event."

Update: NYSUT is involved.

Sheridan statue's 95th

The equestrian statue of Albany-born General Philip Sheridan on the east side of the Capitol is 95 years old this month, according to an interesting post by TU blogger Akum Norder. It's an impressive sculpture, with the one-word identifier "Sheridan" all that people back in 1916 ever thought they'd need. Perhaps because of the natural predilections of the ruling class, Sheridan is portrayed as the middle-aged leader of the U.S. Army in the 1880s, not the fiery Civil War general of 20-plus years before. He's a somewhat controversial figure these days because of his harsh policies toward Indians in the West, but his vigorous enforcement of Reconstruction and defense of African-Americans in the postwar South also should be remembered.

We could use a couple of other Civil War statues in the other main cities of the Capital Region. Former Union College President Roger Hull used to talk about putting up a statue of Union grad William H. Seward, Lincoln's secretary of State, on Seward Place in Schenectady. Now that Hull's running for mayor of the city it's likely not his top priority, but is still a good idea.

And maybe RPI could help Troy put up a statue of Gen.George Thomas, who saved the Union army at Chickamauga and won the Battle of Nashville. He was married in Troy at St. Paul's Episcopal Church and is buried there at Oakwood Cemetery. President Ulysses Grant, who also has a strong connection to the greater Capital Region, came with his Cabinet to the city for Thomas' funeral in 1870. Thomas was from Virginia, where his sisters disowned him for staying loyal to the Union; his wife was from Troy. He, too, like Sheridan and Grant, was an enforcer of Reconstruction and defender of the freed slaves. They could place his statue outside the new City Hall building (wherever they decide to put it), cutting the ribbon on the 150th anniversary of Chickamauga or Nashville.

"The Revolution Will Not Be Televised"

As Gil Scott-Heron put it back in the day. I don't see anything about last night's Occupy Albany meeting in this morning's edition of the Albany Times Union. Nor did I see any TV cameras there (although the only thing about it on Google News is this brief mention on the Channel 10 TV station's Web site). Hell, they haven't even updated the occupyalbany.org Web site yet. I guess despite all their newfangled electronic devices, the kids have a hard time staying up to date.

Not, by the way, that I'm looking for a revolution. There was a Tea Party guy named Spider who spoke briefly at last night's meeting, urging "end the Fed" and stopping all wars. He didn't get much reaction, the meeting quickly moved on, but there are points of obvious similarity as well as obvious difference between the two movements, with both to my mind having pluses and minuses.

Occupy Albany meets

The Occupy Albany general assembly this evening at first didn't have a microphone working in the meeting place, a community arts center in a former church building at Grand Street and Pearl in the expanding and increasingly dangerous (according to Councilwoman Barbara Smith, the only politician speaking at the event) South End. About 300 people were at the second meeting of the organization, which like others across the country was inspired by the ongoing Wall Street protest. That number was apparently a considerable increase from the group's first meeting last week.

So they used "the people's mike," meaning group repetitions of what an individual speaker says, and waved their fingers up or down to indicate support or opposition. There was a lot of energy in the room at first, along with earnest attempts to reach quick consensus, and I found it somewhat impressive. They were deciding to be nonviolent until someone objected, at which point the resolution was modified to permit self-defense but a facilitator said: "We're not going to publicize the self-defense thing."

Exactly what they are going to occupy was not decided, but the most popular suggestion was the state Capitol. One guy said those opposing that site were just uncomfortable opposing the Democratic Party, even though that party is complicit in bad policies such as abolishing the state millionaire's tax. But I saw activist Joe Seeman, a longtime ally of Democrats, waving his fingers down at that. Seeman later urged linking up with other progressive forces, and when the assembly broke up was going into a meeting of the  Coalition Building with Organizations working group. He, like me, was considerably older than the majority of attendees, who included a high proportion of students.

My Democratic wife, who took some pictures for her blog, bought a couple of bumper stickers saying "Tax the Rich". While I won't be using one on my car, and don't think it's the answer to all our budget problems, I can't really object to the sentiment.