Remembering Mayor David Dinkins -Part 4 & More About Us

DONATE: https://sankofalutheranchicago.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MAYOR DINKINS IN THE NEW YORK CITY MAYORALTY OFFICE 1989-1993

1. It is a basic contention of Kawaida African-Centered philosophy, founded, defined, and advanced by Dr. Maulana Karenga, Professor/Chair of Africana Studies, CSULB and Executive Director of the African American Cultural Center/Us, Los Angeles that “If things were as they appeared to be, there would be no need for scientific investigation.”
2. Kawaida, then, exhorts its adherents, of which this writer in one, toward “deep thinking.”
3. Accordingly, we are in this piece attempting a Black (African-Centered) freelance investigative journalism report on the political career of the Hon. David N. Dinkins (1927-2020), New York City’s first and only African American mayor to date (1989-1993).
4. We should remember that Mayor Dinkins wins office in a three way race between the incumbent Ed Koch (1924-2013) and the Republican/Liberal Party fusion candidate, Rudolf Giuliani, the City’s Southern District Federal Prosecutor.
5. Mr. Koch’s administration (1978-1989) was then hampered by corruption within the police department and other city agencies under his watch. Mr. Dinkins, as Manhattan’s Borough President, was considered by pundits Mayor Koch’s most serious challenger.
6. After defeating Mayor Koch in the Democratic Party Primary, Manhattan Borough President Dinkins faced off against Mr. Giuliani whom he subsequently defeated, by a narrow margin, becoming New York City’s first and only Black mayor to date.
7. Crime, or the historic criminalization of New York City and State’s Black and Brown citizens (blaming the victim), was a key established order issue for the incoming Mayor Dinkins’ administration.
8. The above said, according to Wikipedia, “Dinkins entered office in January 1990 pledging racial healing, and famously referred to New York City’s demographic diversity as a “gorgeous mosaic”.^[22] The crime rate in New York City had risen alarmingly during the 1980s, and the rate of homicide in particular reached an all-time high of 2,245 cases during 1990, the first year of the Dinkins administration.
9. Despite popular perception of the new Dinkins administration’s handling of the City’s established order crime issue, Wikipedia notes that in fact “The rates of most crimes, including all categories of violent crime, then declined during the remainder of his four-year term. That ended a 30-year upward spiral and initiated a trend of falling rates that continued and accelerated beyond his term.^[24][25] 
10. Wikipedia goes on to say, that in contrast to the hard facts, “the high absolute levels, the peak early in his administration, and the only modest decline subsequently (homicide down 12% from 1990 to 1993)^[26] resulted in Dinkins’ suffering politically from the perception that crime remained out of control on his watch.”
11. More, contrary to popular belief, and to his lasting credit, Mayor Dinkins convened the Mollen Commission against NYC Police Department corruption in 1992. The famed Commission is defined by Wikipedia below.
12. “The Mollen Commission is formally known as The City of New York Commission to Investigate Allegations of Police Corruption and the Anti-Corruption Procedures of the Police Department. Former judge Milton Mollen was appointed in June 1992 by then New York City mayor David N. Dinkins to investigate corruption in the New York City Police Department.”
13. The Mollen Commission earned for Mr. Dinkins the permanent enmity of the City’s police unions.
14. By contrast, the Mollen Commission earned for Mr. Dinkins the appreciation of the City’s Black and Brown communities, particularly their engaged anti-police targeting, brutality, and abuse community organizers.  
15. The above respective communities and activist forces understood the role of big-city police in their communities was not to protect and serve as advertised, but rather to function as an occupational armed force in policing Black and Brown lives. The Mollen Commission report, then, served to confirm their views, to the consternation of the City’s established order, including especially the City’s police unions but was by no means limited to.

By Rev. Joel Washington (Khunanpu Sangoma). Pastor, Council President, and Saving Black Historical Places Correspondent, Reformation Church Chicago (“Young Barack Obama’s historic community organizing sanctuary”), 12-4-20

CONTACT: langston1212@gmail.com

DONATE: https://sankofalutheranchicago.com