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| Film "City Hall" |
Excerpt,
minor edit by Carolyn Bennett
From WSWS
Tulsa,
Oklahoma, Mayor Dewey Bartlett, in the face of street killings in a
predominantly black American neighborhood “[reaches] out to local NAACP
officials, a black city councilman from Tulsa’s north side, and local
preachers, calling for ‘Operation Bridges of Faith’ to help youth on the north
side [and] asking for ‘brainstorming for ideas to give kids something to do
this summer once school is out…baseball, softball, cheerleading, whatever it might
be.’”
In the 1996 film
“City Hall,” the mayor (played by Al Pacino) visits the dead boy’s home and at his cleverly choreographed press conference later that day, he flanks himself with a choral yet silent presence of black preachers whom he introduces, clearly enunciating “Reverend” …. The mayor then instructs his staff to see that “their” neighborhoods were cleaned up. This NYC fictional mayor pushes theater even further with a ridiculous display of “preaching” at the dead boy’s funeral.
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| City Hall Tulsa, Okla |
Tulsa performance typical, vacuous Life imitating art imitating life
The mayor stole the lines from Pacino and I agree
entirely with Fred Mazelis’s thoughts today at World Socialist Web Site. The Tulsa mayor’s “cynical move … [says] nothing about jobs for working class youth
and the unemployed of all races or the protracted and increasingly desperate
social crisis to which crimes like this are connected,” Mazelis writes.
“While the precise motives and psychological
states of both suspects in the shootings are not fully known or understood —
It is clear that this incident reflects
the growing poverty, hopelessness and social tension that, in the absence of
mass social movements, increasingly erupt in the form of social backwardness
and tragedy.”
Source and
notes
News report:
“Two suspects confess in Tulsa, Oklahoma, shootings” (Fred Mazelis) wsws.org, published
by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), April 13,
2012, http://wsws.org/articles/2012/apr2012/tuls-a13.shtml
“City Hall”
was a 1996 Harold Becker film starring Al Pacino, John Cusack and Bridget
Fonda. The story surrounds an initial (accidental) death of a boy (with racial
overtones) caught in the crossfire of a street shooting with wide-ranging connections
between the mob and the mayor, big-boss party politics, corrupt government,
payoffs, setups and cover ups in New York City; and an investigation by a deputy
mayor with fallout, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115907/
Image City
Hall, http://www.imdb.com/media/rm2326043904/tt0115907
Tulsa, Oklahoma's
Official Governing Body and Services. City Hall Tulsa, foreclosurelistings.com
Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy
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