Page 411 - Demo

Steingut Comes Out as Liberal ChallengerBY ROBERT CRANEThey just stood around the living room-cookies and coffee in the parlor were for afterwards, you see. That much was understood, and so they just stood around, knowing full well from the press leaks yesterday what was going to be said today. And here it was 11:30 a.m.-already late by a half an hour-but there was still a chance that another television crew might find its way to Flatlands.And so they waited. From the looks of things, a double standard governed admission to Stanley Steingut%u2019s sixth-floor apartment. For the media, anyone with a pencil gets in. Everyone else seemed invited according to the ethic character of the district Steingut is in danger of losing for all time. There were just the right number of Jews, of blacks. What there weren%u2019t were identifiable Democrats. No governor. No mayor. No City Council president. No one, in short, worthpumping for an endorsement.The predominant fixture in the room (beside several rather decent paintings) is the roof-to-floor bookshelf. So it was there, finally, that he staked his ground, cleared his throat and played chameleon for short term advantage. This, too, everyone understood. When you%u2019re too unpopular to win a primary, but politically too powerful to quit, you retool. Of consummate imagery does Stanley Steingut-Speaker of the Assembly, the state%u2019s second most powerful Democrat, defeated by his own neighbors in a bloody primary-hope to reincarnate on the Liberal line.And how the images poured forth. Steingut, he said of himself, is a man of the streets. %u201cThese city streets where 1 played as a child and where my children played mean too much to me%u201d to quit, he said.A man of the people: his telephones, Steingut said, %u201chave not stopped ringing%u201d as the community beseeched him %u201cnot toturn and walk away.%u201dA sensitive man: %u201c 1 won%u2019t sit here and pretend that 1 have not been wounded,%u201d and one moved by virtue: %u201c We will not cross the boundaries of decency, honesty and morality in our quest for victory.%u201dAnd, of course, a family man. %u201cTell %u2019em what%u2019cha told me last night,\Madeline, his wife. %u201c I told him last night,\he was never a quitter.\It got a little touchy after the invitees had clapped into the reporters%u2019 tape machines. Your opponent, asked one reporter, charges that you%u2019ve ignored the community. Not so, Steingut responded. %u201c For two months 1 walked the streets, I didn%u2019t take anything for granted.%u201d Well then, piped up another, what were your mistakes? %u201c I am not going to look backwards,%u201d he shot back. Don't you feel like you%u2019ve made a pact with the devil to run as a liberal? someone asked. %u201c I want it to be known that my running on the Liberal line doesnot make me one whit less a Democrat, a lifelong Democrat, a proud Democrat,\said. Just over his head, on the bookshelf, was prominently displayed a copy of %u201cThe Kennedy Years.\Speaker%u201d letter from Jimmy Carter adorned the piano.And since Flatlands is a long ways off their beaten paths, the TVs started packing up, Steingut took the cue and thanked everyone for coming. The knowledgeable left fast and everyone else stayed for cookies.Downstairs, by the apartment next to the elevator, stood two shoppers. %u201c They say Stanley Steingut is having a press conference upstairs,%u201d one said. %u201c That%u2019s what 1 figured,%u201d said the other, %u201c since they cleaned up the building this morning.%u201d %u201c Yeah,\these years we've lived here and it%u2019s the only thing having Steingut as a neighbor has done for us.%u201dDaughtry Tapes ListOn City Hall DoorBY PETER HALEYWearing sunglasses and a broadbrimmed yellow hat, Reverend Herbert Daughtry - one of Brooklyn%u2019s most prominent last angry, not-so young men -- taped the demands of the Black United Front (BUF) to the doorway of City Hall in %u201cthe name of our community and our God.\It was a secular ceremony peformed for the radio, TV, and print media which crowded Daughtry and his aides into the doorw ay while on the other side of the police barricades which ringed City Hall Park the 1,000, mostly black, demonstrators supporting the Front%u2019s demands were assembling on nearby Murray Street for the September 28th noon rally.The principal demands called for an end to the alleged mistreatment of blacks under Mayor Ed Koch%u2019s administration and continued the Front%u2019s protest of police %u201cbrutality and murder%u201d against the black community and of %u201c vigilantestyled%u201d attacks by whites against blacks. The demands stated that the city Human Resources Administration (HRA) Commissioner Blanche Bernstein %u201c must resign or be fired%u201d because of %u201c anti-black hiring policies%u201d and other offenses within HRA and that the yet-to-be revealed Koch administration restructuring of the city%u2019s antipoverty organizations was a Koch power play aimed at ending community control.The death of teen-age blacks and Crown Heights community leader Arthur Miller at the hands of city police and white attacks upon blacks in Crown Heights and Borough Park were cited as evidence of a black community under attack from the city%u2019s white population. Other demands called for a halt in plans to close or cut back health services at various city hospitals and protested black unemployment, the decline in child care and senior citizen services, and the %u201c massive miseducation%u201d in the city%u2019s public education system.After taping the Front%u2019s demands, Daughtry turned and told the press, %u201c We hope, pray, arid plea that the citv will respond to these demands because the situation is so volcanic, we shudder to think of the implications.%u201dON THE BOARDDaughtry and other Front leaders and allies have more than %u201c shuddering%u201d on their minds, however. A few minutes earlier Daughtry had told these samenewsmen that while he did not intend to reveal future Front strategies, we have some things on the drawing board.%u201d%u201c Some of us are determined that business will not go on as usual in New York City as long as the brutality and murder of black people, black unemployment, and miseducation in our school system continue,%u201d declared Daughtry.Just who %u201c us%u201d are and what the seeming collision course set between the Koch administration and militant Brooklyn blacks will mean, are pieces to a puzzle that have been strewn about mostly during the nine month-old Koch administration. Recognizing the gap between City Hall and local communities earlier this summer in the wake of the Crown Heights disputes, the Koch administration formed a Council on Intergroup Relations made up of various city community leaders to anticipate and defuse ethnic disputes like Crown Heights. Besides involving black community leaders in the Council, Koch appointed Isaiah Robinson, a black and former city School Board of Education member, as Human Rights Commissioner, who promptly announced that the death of Arthur Miller, the beating by Hasidim of Victor Rhodes, and other incidents in Crown Heights were %u201c separate%u201d incidents that had been distorted by the media into a \Koch will appoint former Ford Foundation program director Ronald Gault as a special adviser on black affairs in the city in another effort to heal the rift between the mayor%u2019s administration and blacks and to put the pieces together.Daughtry, along with two other prominent Brooklyn black leaders, the BUF%u2019s Dr. Vernal Cave and Bedford-Stuyvesant minister and activist Rev. William Jones, has spurned the Council as %u201c tea and cocktail stuff.%u201d He described Robinson as %u201c Koch%u2019s boy%u201d in a recent interview. Daughtry, definitely not among those considered for the post of Koch's adviser on black affairs, is the leading member of the BUF lineup, and while he is a %u201cteam%u201d player, the born-again, ex-convict turned Pentecostal preacher is easily the most well-known portion of this puzzle.PULLING TOGETHERIndeed, the magnifying effect of the TV, radio, and print media have made 1978 -- at least as far as theblack community is concerned -- the year of the Daughtry. His involvement with the Fulton Street crusade to increase black employment among its major retailers; the anti-Congressman Fred Richmond campaign; and most recently, the BUF, has catapaulted Daughtry into prominence. And while the activist minister is occasionally controversial more in the erratic fashion of former Yankee skipper Billy Martin than, say, his former sparring mate Yankee star outfielder Reggie Jackson (evident in his alleged anti-Semitic outburst during a black rally and his attempt to disrupt Koch at the Atlantic Antic parade two Sundays ago), he has helped pull some segments of the Brooklyn black community together.At last Thursday%u2019s rally, perhaps the most significant participants in the BUF%u2019s march on City Hall were Brooklyn legislators Assemblyman A1 Vann and State Senator Major Owens. Both Vann and Owens beat back efforts by the regular Democratic organization and black Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm to defeat them in September's Democratic primary. Chisholm backed former City Councilman Sam W right%u2019s aide Jeanette Gadson against Owens, who was an important ally during her 1976 rc-elcction campaign. She also supported Calvin Williams, a black taxi czar, and Carl Butler, incumbent Bedford-Stuyvesant Democratic district leader, against Vann for assembly and district leader respectively.Chisholm and almost all other black elected leaders in the city, except Vann and Owens, were noticeably absent from the BUF's rally on the 28th, and when asked why this was so, Owens responded, %u201c Where the rest (black political leaders) are 1 don%u2019t know. We are here.%u201dPressed as to why Chisholm, Harlem Congressman Charles Rangel, and various other elected blacks had not articulated the same demands as Daughtry and other BUF leaders, the East New York state senator answered, %u201c The real leadership comes from the streets.%u201dHow real and how deep this %u201c street%u201d campaign against City Hall is remains to be seen (the rally had hoped to draw 10,000 and the overwhelming majority present was from Brooklyn), but individual blacks interviewed during the Atlantic Avenue to City Hall marchBlack United Front members lead the protestingcontingent toward City Hall. Rev. Daughtry is center(Michaei Cuiccio Photo)and rally indicated why they were %u201c all fired up%u201d over the Koch administration and the black-white situation in the city in general.WHAT THEY THINK\going on. My son was victimized by the police and for five months I've been getting the run-around from the cops, the Civilian Review Board, and everyone concerned,%u201d said Liston Canton, a Crown Heights resident who took the day off from work to join in what he said was his first demonstration.Among loose who joined the parade en route, in addition to screen and theatrical actor Ossie Davis and other notables, was Fort Greene%u2019s Michael Chappel. While shopping on Fulton Street Chappel, a young black in his 20s, joined the march as it was passing by. Why?%u201c Because of the corruption in New York City,\%u201c I%u2019m referring to the black man. They killed enough black brothers. Wc got rights. These killings and beatings happen and then you don't hear nothing about it and wegotta stop it.%u201dA Brownsville Community Corporation worker who was part of a contingent that joined up with the march said the %u201cjob problem of black unemployment was being neglected by the Koch administration and claimed that BUF rally was %u201cjust the beginning\actions that %u201c will blanket the whole city.\Whatever action that may take place, Daughtry and other Black United Front spokesmen are known to be %u201c hard-liners%u201d and the insurgent political forces of Vann and Owens owe no favors to Koch or Democratic political captains in Brooklyn. This is no doubt part of their appeal to many black %u201c men and women in the streets,%u201d but whether these pieces will fit in the puzzle -- or be replaced by other black leaders and groups that %u201c fit%u201d better with the Koch administration - remains to be seen.In the meantime, the Black United Front and its political allies arc probably headed for a series of confrontations with the mayor.October 5,1978, THE PHOENIX, Page 7c u t . ' W A %u2018 * %u2022M i %u2022