NY candidate Bill de Blasio — another Obama?

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4 SOCIALIST ACTION NOVEMBER 2013 NEW YORK—The Bill de Blasio mayoral campaign has garnered rapt comparisons to the excitement generated by the 2008 Barack Obama campaign. De Blasio has a history of support to the 1979 Nica­ raguan revolution and spent his honey­ moon in Cuba with his African American wife. But that was a long time ago. Like Obama, De Blasio will certainly let down his working-class supporters. He belongs to the Democratic Party wing of the U.S. capitalist class, the deathbed of all social struggles.

On Oct. 5, de Blasio, told the Association for a Better New York, a business group, “I’m a fiscal conservative.” He then re­ peated, “I’m a progressive activist fiscal conservative, but I’m still a fiscal conser­ vative.”

Nevertheless, polls give de Blasio a re­ markable 64% of the vote, a massive lead over his Republican opponent, Joe Lhota, former head of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The working-class majority is plainly disgusted with three terms of billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The vote is Nov. 5.

De Blasio’s popular narrative has been that New York has become “A Tale of Two Cities,” from the title of the Charles Dick­ ens novel about 18th-century Paris and London, to make the point that New York is sharply divided by riches and poverty. It’s an apt characterization. New York is the most unequal city in the U.S. The rich­ est 1 percent of New Yorkers claimed al­ most 39% of the city’s income share in 2012—up from 12% in 1980.

The city’s poverty rate rose to 21.2 per­ cent in 2012. Over 1.7 million New York­ ers live below the official federal poverty line ($23,314 for a family of four). Ac­ cording to the U.S. Census Bureau, 31 per­ cent of the city’s children live in poverty. Some 50,000 men, women, and children are homeless. According to the Economic Policy Institute, an average family of four in New York needs a $93,000-a-year in­ come to live modestly. Yet, median house­ hold income in 2012 was about $49,500.

There’s more. A racist police “stop and frisk” policy targets African Americans, overwhelmingly innocent youth, accom­ panied by high profile cop murders of African American youth like Marley Gra­ ham and Kamani Gray. According to 2012 NYPD “stop and frisk” data for 2012 New Yorkers were stopped by cops 533,042 times. 89% were found totally innocent; 55% were Black, 32% were Hispanic and 10% white.

De Blasio rode the popular outrage to political gain. He has stopped short of rejecting “stop and frisk” and has re­ cently found himself in the company of the rich—including face-to-face sessions with Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, Phillipe Dauman, the CEO of Viacom, and the owners of New York’s two major tab­ loids: Rupert Murdoch and Mort Zucker­ man.

Moreover, de Blasio has expressed ad­ miration for the Democratic politicians and the Democratic Party-aligned labor misleaders during New York’s economic crisis of the late 1970s who agreed upon a mass layoff of about 60,000 public workers and drastic public services cuts demanded by the banks.

Bloomberg has stonewalled every pub­ lic union in contract negotiations. Many have been without a contract for years. De Blasio, who heavily courted and won support from big unions like SEIU 1199 hospital workers, has refrained from committing to a raise without the give­ backs that Bloomberg demanded. “I’m not here to tell them how much they’re gonna hate me. I’m here to tell them that we are going to get to a deal and balance our budget,” said the Democrat.

De Blasio has positioned himself as a crusading “tax the rich” Democrat. Yet his only plan is to fund pre-kindergarten and afterschool programs with a puny 1/2% tax on those making over $500,000. Tax­ (Left) De Blasio and other Democrats share a laugh at press conference.

ing Wall Street stock trades, for example, could bring in many more billions each month—a strategy de Blasio has refused to embrace. Like all Democrats and Re­ publicans, de Blasio offers no mass jobs plan, stranding millions of New Yorkers to live in poverty and hopelessness—if they’re not cut down by racist cops.

When de Blasio’s wife Chirlane replied to media questions about the strange contrasts between her husband’s popu­ list image and his many face-to-face meetings with Wall Street hedge-fund tycoons and media barons, she replied, “People change, because they have to grow in order to live.”

Socialists point out that working people need a party of their own, a fighting labor party. The labor movement must reject supporting any Democrat. This “progres­ sive” Democrat, if elected, is destined to disappoint and enrage his former sup­ porters. n A presentation by Stanford Professor Mark Jacobson and environmental writer Jeremy Brecher 350 CT, Power without Pollution, Capitalism v. the Climate. Info: [email protected]

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