Mayoral hopefuls took appearances at various Martin Luther King Day events as opportunity to outline their plans for the city. Mayor Bloomberg gave a speech at Canaan Baptist Chuch in Brooklyn, and right after he left, former Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer attacked the mayor, saying:
"If [Martin Luther King] were here, he might be saying, 'Have we all gone mad, New York?' We're getting ready to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a football team on the West Side when people are going without a place in which to live. People are going without a meal. Have we all gone mad, New York?"
While the city certainly does some insane things, suddenly, Gothamist has visions of a Network-Howard Beale moment. What was interesting is that Al Sharpton, who introduced the Mayor, gave him credit for reaching out to the black community, pointing out that Mayor Giuliani ignored them. The Reverend Al also joked that he should run for mayor, too.
It seems that while the Mayor did get a decent reception, it was City Councilman Charles Barron's criticism of the Mayor, noting that the "Jets, Nets, and Olympics" priorities of the Bloomberg administration, not regular New Yorkers, was something that "set the crowd on fire." It will be interesting to see how the Mayor continues to explain that the West Side Stadium project will drive jobs for the working class and not siphon money from areas that desperately need resources.
