NYC-WTC_000230655

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

T«E NEW’ York, times, Thursday, October 4,2001

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Focus of Candidates’ Claims Is on Ability to Unite the City .i-Fo!lowing are excerpts from the very discriminated against, to get debate last night between the two justice and get their due. Democratic candidates for mayor, You could talk about there being ' Fernando Ferrer and Mark Green, 200 New Yorks. That’s as many eth­ as recorded by The New York Times. nicities, races and religions as there The debate, broadcast on NYl News, are. But before Sept, 11, I was the was ths first of two required by the candidate, I was the Democrat run­ Campaign Finance Board in the ning to unite New York. Figurative­ I Timocratic runoff. ly, I said I wanted to be a Brooklyn Bridge linking black, white. .Latino, q'? In light of the World Trade Center Asian, Jew, Christian, Muslim, attack, the idea of two New Yorks no straight or gay. We could harp on our longer seems like an appropriate is- differences or we could try to be sjie. So how then do you plan to united as a city. mobilize all New Yorkers to support 1 wouldn't have harped on a two- ■your plans? ... city strategy, and I didn’t.... FERRER A terrorist attack on inno­ Q.... 1 just want to be clear here, Mr. centcivilians, people working in that Green, are you saying the message building everywhere from heroic of two New Yorks is divisive? 'firefighters, police officers, construc- GREEN I don't have to say it’s divisive .t^'n workers, E.M.S. workers, multi­ because I didn’t utter it. 1 talked millionaire bond brokers and the im- about hundreds of New Yorks, which ntigrant who brings up the coffee and is why I’ve had a town meeting in (fqughnuts in the morning, has to every neighborhood Of course we’re touch us all. different, by race, by creed. ^"^‘.But they all led very real lives. ,^d before that attack, too many of q. But Tm asking you a direct ques­ i^eir kids were trapped in under- tion. ^imded and overcrowded schools. GREEN I’m not going to have — I’m many of them found that they not going to answer whether it’s divi­ couldn’t find a decent place to live at sive. because I wasn’t the one who a"price that they could afford. ran on it. 1 ran on a campaign of ,.|.But things changed in this respect bringing the city together to work as well. After that attack we all live together. That, now more than ever, IK,that other New York. We all will be has to be our civic creed. called upon to sacrifice. We all will FERRER You know, when you talk be called upon to do without. And we about the problems of affordable can't forget the reasons that im­ housing, inadequate, underfunded pelled us to run for mayor in the first and overcrowded public schools, no place. They are improving public afterschool programs, my willing^ schools. For me they are afterschool ness to take a stand against the may­ programs. They kept me off the or on proposing that trivial pennies- streets. Were it not for a good educa­ a-day tax cut that would rob us of our tion. you’d be asking this question of ability to keep 200 middle schools some other guy tonight, not me. They open and give working parents and 'are about decent and affordable their kids afterschool programs. One housing for people. We may get to out of four New Yorkers, many of those goals more slowly, but we have whom work, who don't have health to reach those goals for all New insurance for themselves or their ‘Yorkers. And that's an inherently kids, or the problems of the relation­ unifying message. ... ship that existed well before Sept. 11 GREEN My whole public life for the between people and their own Police , list 30 years has been guided in the Department. I don’t recall in the last back of my mind by an ethic I debates, Mark, your ever saying that learned as a young lawyer: Those was divisive. Perhaps now you feel less favored tn life should be more the need to denigrate the things that favored in law. So I’ve gone out of my I’m saying’ the Issues that I’m rais­ way to fight as a consumer commis­ ing, but let me just say something. sioner', as now the public advocate, You don’t elevate yourself by deni­ for the very young, the very old, the grating that....

CITY_21MC100_011830651

NYC-WTC_000230655