Our Town, Feb. 3, 2005
To the Editor:
Cathy Stewart’s letter in the Jan. 27, 2005 issue is quite misleading. She is not some crusader for independent politics in the town. She is the Manhattan Chairperson of the extremely partisan Independence Party. It may be that many New Yorkers register in the Independence Party thinking they are registering as independent voters. To be a leader in a movement to reform politics by bringing more people into the system, misleading voters is not the way to do this.
As for Ms. Stewart’s problem with incumbent politicians being incapable of leading a reform movement, whom is she fooling? The Independence Party loves incumbents. They have repeatedly endorsed Charles Schumer for Senator and Michael Bloomberg for Mayor. Lenora Fulani, the leader of this Party, has become an important player in the Bloomberg re-election campaign. Her cultural foundation, the All-Stars Project, staged a show, in 2004, in Crown Heights,[1] which implied Jews might have been to blame for the riots of 1991. It was generally criticized as being anti-Semitic, and yet the aforementioned public officials, Jewish no less, addressed the Lincoln Center fundraiser for the All-Stars Project last April. And the Mayor embraces Fulani and is thrilled to have Independence backing this year.
Ms. Stewart would have you think she is an idealistic reformer. She is not. She is the head of a partisan political organization, which can wheel and deal with the best. Why she hid her Independence affiliation in her letter, I can’t say. But for those who don’t know who she is, I hope this letter has helped.
--Evan Edwards, Republican State Committee, 69th Assembly District
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Dennis King comments:
The writer of the above letter is to be commended for his principled stand. Unfortunately, the number of New York politicians willing to speak out is all too few. Mr. Edwards' position is in sharp contrast to that of most city council, state assembly and state senate members in Manhattan who know how bad the Independence Party leadership is, but remain quiet in order not to offend higher-up Democrats such as U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer, State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (or higher-up Republicans such as Bloomberg and Joe Bruno), all of whom are allied with the Independence Party. This website calls on all Democratic, Republican and Conservative Party state committee members to follow the example of Mr. Edwards and denounce the cynical deals that their party leaders have made with Fulani, her guru Fred Newman and the totalitarian cult that has captured the Independence Party.
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[1] The play Mr. Edwards refers to--Crown Heights--was staged at Newman and Fulani's Castillo Theater on W. 42nd Street in Manhattan. They subsequently offered to perform it for free in the city's public schools, and it's possible it was performed in a school in or near Crown Heights.
