NWU president Larry Goldbetter stands with NLN editor Tom Good
(Photo: Bud Korotzer / NLN)

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — December 21, 2009. On Saturday, National Writers Union President Larry Goldbetter issued a statement defending union writer, and NLN editor, Thomas Good who had recently been on the receiving end of what Goldbetter described as “an unprincipled attack” by Staten Island GOP boss John Friscia.

GOOD WORKS?

Goldbetter’s statement was only the most recent salvo fired by two sides that have squared off over the issue of Good receiving a Congressional certificate from Congressman Mike McMahon (D, NY-13) this past October. Honored by Peace Action for his work as a photojournalist, Good, along with three other honorees, received a certificate from McMahon’s office for “community service.” The Tea Party and the Staten Island GOP leadership attacked McMahon for issuing the certificate, prompting a response from Peace Action’s Sally Jones and subsequently a statement from Goldbetter.

Ironically, neither Peace Action, Goldbetter or Good support McMahon’s political positions. In his acceptance speech, at a Peace Action dinner, Good said that “I hope that it’s okay that I didn’t vote for this guy.” For their part, Peace Action will be holding a protest at McMahon’s office tomorrow — objecting to his support of the escalation of the Afghanistan War — and Goldbetter is annoyed that McMahon voted against health care reform.

RADICAL IDEAS

On December 11 of this year, Staten Island Republican Party Chair Friscia, a personal injury lawyer whose firm has as its motto, “Representing the people, not the powerful,” issued a press statement condemning McMahon for giving an award to Good. Friscia’s ostensible objection to McMahon’s office issuing the award was that Good is a “radical” who helped the new SDS in 2006. Friscia appeared to be repeating charges levelled at Good by Staten Island realtor Frank Santarpia who earlier had written a letter to the editor of the Staten Island Advance. In the letter, Santarpia identified himself as an “organizer” with the Tea Party, an ultra-right group that claims to be “non-partisan” despite the fact that they regard President Barack Obama as a “socialist” who is responsible for their members being “crushed under the boot-heels of radicals.” Santarpia’s website argues that Obama’s administration is “making capitalism a dirty word.” “They and their minions work day and night” towards this end, Santarpia said.

The Staten Island Advance reported that Friscia, like Santarpia before him, had come to the conclusion that McMahon’s giving a certificate to a radical was evidence of “Mike McMahon’s liberal agenda despite his conservative press releases.”

According to the Advance, “McMahon spokeswoman Lauren Amendolara called Friscia’s statement ‘inane.’”

PEACE ACTION CORRECTS FRISCIA

Peace Action responded to Friscia by issuing a press statement, “correcting” the GOP party boss. The statement said that:

Peace Action of Staten Island wishes to correct Staten Island Republican Chair John Friscia’s public statement criticizing Congressman Michael McMahon’s office for issuing a community service certificate to Peace Action honoree photojournalist Thomas Good.

Peace Action of Staten Island feels this honor was well-deserved. Mr. Good has given countless hours to record and document many Staten Island events on the online news website Next Left Notes (www.nextleftnotes.net), including rallies and forums for health care reform, marriage equality, living wage jobs, and for bringing the troops home from eight long years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Staten Island Advance has benefited from Mr. Good’s work to cover events that they do not have the resources to cover. Whether or not Mr. Friscia believes in the position of the hundreds of Staten Islanders who have participated in these events, as someone who believes in the free press, he would have to agree that the coverage of these events is a community service.

Mr. Friscia’s statement condemns Mr. Good for his support of the “radical” Students for a Democratic Society, which is a network of multi-issue student groups around the country grounded in the principle of participatory democracy that was revived in 2006. The new SDS members consider themselves “radical” because they want to change society to end oppression, create a sustainable economy, and end wars of aggression.

Peace Action of Staten Island stands for the “radical” ideas of ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as soon as possible and negotiating now for the abolition of nuclear weapons. Many Staten Islanders have come around to believing in these “radical” ideas, too. We want to thank Congressman Michael McMahon for the certificate his office gave to photojournalist Thomas Good in recognition of his documenting these efforts.

THE NATIONAL WRITERS UNION PRESIDENT STANDS WITH TOM GOOD

On Saturday, Larry Goldbetter, President of the NWU — Local 1981 of the United Auto Workers – issued a statement expressing his support of Good:

I want to congratulate photojournalist Thomas Good on receiving his certificate of recognition from Congressman Mike McMahon. I am proud to count Tom among the more than 1,400 members of the National Writers Union/UAW Local 1981, the only union for freelance writers of all genres. Tom has spent thousands of hours and covered countless struggles of working people and in the service of progressive causes. Frankly, the Congressman could learn a thing or two from him, especially in relation to the current struggle for healthcare. Congressman McMahon was the ONLY Democratic Congressman from New York City to vote against the health care bill.

As for the unprincipled attack by Staten Island GOP boss John Friscia, a trivial job if ever there was one, Tom should consider that yet another award, a badge of honor. As a former member of SDS myself, I consider the years spent actively opposing the genocidal war in Vietnam, opposing racism and building a worker-student alliance as having set the course of my life on the side of working people. There’s an old union song called, “Which Side Are You On.” We know the answer with both Tom and Friscia. And I’m standing with Tom Good.

Human Rights Commissioner Galen Kirkland
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — When asked what he thought of western civilization, Mohatma Gandhi famously quipped, “I think it would be a good idea.” New York State Human Rights Commissioner Galen Kirkland agrees.

On Wednesday, December 9, The Staten Island Advance sponsored the Sixth Annual Anti-Bias Summit. The summit was co-sponsored by a number of community groups, including the NAACP and the Staten Island Clergy Leadership. Project Hospitality organized the event, which took place at the Albanian Islamic Cultural Center, a mosque on Staten Island’s North Shore.

Imam Tahir Kukiai opened the proceedings, offering a prayer for blessings on those who had, “[..] Gathered to implement one of God’s teachings: justice, mercy and peace amongst his creatures.”

The NAACP’s Ed Josey, President of the Staten Island Branch, told the crowd, “We need to create a community that cares proactively — not just communities that respond when things go bad.”

After recognizing the representatives of local elected officials — Bill Tate from Rep. McMahon’s office, Tom Aiello from Governor Paterson’s office, Chris Bowers from Assemblyman Matt Titone’s office, Angelo Thornton from Council Member James Oddo’s office and Chris Johnson from Council Member-elect Debi Rose’s office — Josey introduced attorney Galen Kirkland, the keynote speaker.

Ed Josey of the NAACP
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

In May of 2008, Galen Kirkland was appointed by Governor David Paterson to the post of Commissioner of the Division of Human Rights. At the time, Kirkland was working as the Assistant Attorney General, Civil Rights Bureau at the New York State Office of the Attorney General. Prior to working at the OAG, Kirkland was the Executive Director of Advocates for Children of New York, overseeing educational advocacy programs in the New York City public school system. From 1989 to 1990 Mr. Kirkland was the Executive Director of the New York City Civil Rights Coalition, a coalition of civil rights, religious, and community organizations. In this capacity, Kirkland responded to bias-related violence and organized multiracial coalitions in various neighborhoods to prevent violence.

Kirkland is charismatic, articulate and possessed of unflinching resolve. Taking the podium, he immediately set the tone of his remarks by noting that the subtitle of the event — “from tolerance to trust” — should be changed to “from acceptance to trust.” Kirkland told the sympathetic crowd that, “Tolerance is still a very negative frame of mind, it’s a closed heart.”

Kirkland looks and sounds the part of the civil rights old-fighter. He grew up in Harlem, raised by a single mother. His mother, who will be 92 in February, instilled in him a passion to be a part of the fight for social justice. Coming of age in the Sixties, Kirkland heard Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. speak and came away inspired. Seeing civil rights activists beaten and sprayed with water cannons, Kirkland felt confused. Struggling to understand why southern whites hated African-Americans, young Kirkland read whatever he could get his hands on.

Galen Kirkland
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

“I read a book by a woman, a Polish woman, who had survived the Holocaust in Europe and her account of the absolute absence of compassion in the Nazis and their total cruelty was horrifying. But what it did was to help me as a child understand that the same mass insanity that was empowering Europe at the time was what was operative here in the United States and it helped me understand what was going on. Once I understood that I realized that I wanted to become a lawyer and fight for social justice,” Kirkland said.

In the 1986 Howard Beach incident, a mob of whites attacked four young black men. The mob chased a badly beaten Michael Griffith onto a highway where he was struck by a car and killed. Reflecting on the incident, Kirkland came to the conclusion that silence in the face of bigotry produced a “degradation of our humanity” — people of conscience must act. But how?

“The basic question that confronts us is how we overcome the most repressive, violent, bigoted instincts that some people have,” he said.

The answer to Kirkland’s question resides in a sense of community.

Noticing that many people are willing to stand up for decency and justice “as long as they have somebody to lock hands with,” Kirkland said that “Organizing to overcome the ignorance of people who don’t want to accept others who are different from them requires really hard organizing: person to person, in small groups, on a sustained basis, innovative thinking and dedication.”

But it requires something else that Kirkland said he was never taught in law school.

“There also has to be love in your heart,” he said.

“And here we are, in the Albanian Islamic Cultural Center, meeting while the United States is at war in Iraq and Afghanistan. At a time when many people feel as if they’re free to vent aggression and hatred towards Muslims because of the fact that radical jihadists have attempted to sieze the mantle of Islam. But the fact of the matter is, we are all under a responsibility to defend the rights of Muslims in this country, in this city, in this state,” Kirkland said.

“If we don’t defend our Muslim brothers and sisters we are all diminished because our human rights are interdependent,” he added.

Recalling the Buddhist concept of interbeing — and Martin Luther King, Jr’s “beloved community,” Kirkland appealed to the young people in the mosque to pick up the mantle of nonviolent activism in the name of peace and social justice.

As someone who practices what he preaches, Kirkland invited a former Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee field secretary to address the NY State Division of Human Rights. Shortly after he was appointed to his current post at the Division, Kirkland asked Bob Moses, who worked in Mississippi in 1964 — during the Freedom Summer voter registration drive — to visit New York. Moses, one of SNCC’s most influential organizers back in the day, told the Division’s staff that “The civil rights movement [ of the Sixties ] stopped short.” Moses argued that the movement failed to address the issue of education. Moses said that today, African-Americans receive a “sharecropper education” — and he called for a second civil rights movement. According to Kirkland, Moses electrified the Human Rights Division staffers. He was so impressive that the Division asked him back a second time. And he came.

A recipient of the War Resisters League Peace award in 1997, Bob — now “Robert P.” — Moses teaches trigonometry at Lanier High School in Jackson, Mississippi and is working to pass a constitutional amendment that states that “every child in this country is a child of this country and is entitled to a quality public school education.”

Inspired by Moses and other Sixties-era activists, Kirkland continues to work diligently for civil rights and social justice. And he urges others to do the same. Kirkland told the crowd at the mosque that to organize a community to respect human rights, “You reach out to the good people and you never stop reaching out. And you never stop meeting. And you never stop discussing. You keep fighting, day after day after day.”

Although he was heartened by the number of young people who attended the summit, Kirkland realizes that full enfranchisement of all who live in the U.S. is a long way off.

“Some people say we’re civilized. I say, we’ve made a lot of progress but we’re not there yet,” he said.

View Kirkland’s Speech In Its Entirety
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

View Photos/Videos From The Event…