Eliezer Sherman – Algemeiner
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s decision to name the city’s Municipal Building after early 90’s mayor David Dinkins raised some eyebrows over at the New York Post on Friday.
The paper challenged de Blasio’s decision to enshrine the former mayor’s name atop the building housing the comptroller, public advocate and various city agencies in downtown Manhattan, citing Dinkins’ failures to properly address two racially heated incidents during his single term: the Crown Heights riots — a “pogrom,” as many in the Jewish community called it — and the boycott of Korean shops also in Brooklyn.
Additionally, “crime was out of control during the Dinkins years, a crisis summarized by a classic Post front-page headline: ‘Dave, Do Something,’” the typically conservative Post reasoned.
“It isn’t denigrating David Dinkins’ devotion to the city — or his lasting place in history as New York’s first African-American mayor — to suggest that perhaps the city should be a bit more selective when it comes to such honors,” said the Post.
The Crown Heights riots broke out early during Dinkins time as mayor — in 1991 just one year after he was elected. The three days of African – and Caribbean American anti-Jewish violence were triggered when a member of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson’s three-car cavalcade careened onto the sidewalk killing a local seven-year-old immigrant child of Guyanese parents.
Describing the explosive incident, the New York Times wrote in August, 1991: “Hasidim and blacks clashed in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn through the day and into the night yesterday as the two communities, separately and bitterly, each mourned a member killed, one in a traffic accident on Monday night and the other stabbed in the racial melee that followed.”
“Bottles, rocks and ethnic slurs were hurled as hundreds of police officers struggled to separate the screaming, taunting groups near the headquarters of the Lubavitcher sect, at 770 Eastern Parkway,” the newspaper explained.
Owing to his failures to address these issues, Dinkins suffered a defeat at the polls in 1993 after just one term, losing to Rudy Giuliani.
You really think Obama was the best president?
naming the municipal building for my good friend dinkins is like naming obama the best president
he was just not strong enough to resist the evil influences, and he made decisions based on what he was urged to do, by people who did not have the city’s welfare in best interest. He should not be named after for the city. let his family do so
Dinkins is alive and well…
During his final days in office, Dinkins made last-minute negotiations with the sanitation workers, presumably to preserve the public status of garbage removal. Rudy Giuliani, who defeated Dinkins in the 1993 mayoral race, blamed Dinkins for a “cheap political trick” when Dinkins planned the resignation of Victor Gotbaum, Dinkins’ appointee on the Board of Education, thus guaranteeing Gotbaum’s replacement six months in office.[20] Dinkins also signed a last-minute 99-year lease with the USTA National Tennis Center. By negotiating a fee for New York City based on the event’s gross income, the Dinkins administration made a deal with the US Open… Read more »
Dinkins entered office pledging racial healing, and famously referred to New York City’s demographic diversity as a “gorgeous mosaic.”[15] Under Dinkins’ Safe Streets, Safe Cities program, crime in New York City decreased more dramatically and more rapidly, both in terms of actual numbers and percentage, than at any time in modern New York City history.[16] The rates of most crimes, including all categories of violent crime, made consecutive declines during the last 36 months of his four-year term, ending a 30-year upward spiral and initiating a trend of falling rates that continued beyond his term.[3] Despite the actual abating of… Read more »
BS”D
didn’t know Dinkens died
The whole world is upside down; honoring the wrong people, blaming Israel for Arab violence, calling abominations by same genders as marriage. We want Moshiach now!
BS”D
ps its politics as usual-de Blas is courting the black vote
Naming THE NYC Municipal Building after Dinkins is like naming a school library after a non-performing student. They may both be nice people, but neither of them can be considered shining examples of what their respective institutions represent. Mayor de Blasio, surely you can find a more generic location on which to enshrine Mayor Dinkins’ name? There are, you must surely know, too many New Yorkers who still cringe when they are reminded of his majorly poor performance ( or non-performance) in office.