May 26, 2002

 
 
 
 

"Save Our City" starts the sneaky season in Buffalo politics

by Bruce Jackson

On Friday and Saturday, May 24 and 25, many voters in Buffalo received a very expensively designed and printed 8/12" by 22" brochure attacking Buffalo Mayor Anthony Masiello and, en passant, Erie County Executive Joel Giambra.

The brochure is folded twice horizontally, so there are six panels, three on each side. The side with the address has your name (mine had my middle initial, which I use nowhere except on voting records and my driver's licence) "or current resident," the house address, and the nine-digit zip code. It has a bulk mailing permit box ("presorted standard U.S. postage paid SGI").

The return address is "Save Our City, P.O. Box 1025, Buffalo, NY 14201-1025." Buffalo information has no telephone number for any organization calling itself "Save Our City."

Beneath that return address is a recycling symbol, which tells us nothing, and an oval encircling the letters GCIU, adjacent to which is "640-L."

"GCIU" within an oval seems to be the logo of the Graphic Communications International Union. "640-L" is the union's local at the Delaney Printing Company, which is located at 113 Sibley Street, Hammond, Indiana, 46320, 219-933-0656. How odd that a group wanting to save Buffalo would get its printing done in Hammond, Indiana.

The lower half of that panel has red banner with black type saying "Tony Masiello is running Buffalo into the ground," under which are two photographs. The photograph on the left depicts two healthy running bisons. The photograph on the right depicts the dessicated skeleton of what I think is an Asian water buffalo, which, presumably, the graphic artist assumed was the same thing as the American bison, which it isn't. Not that it matters much, since the American never ran around Erie County either.

On the other panel that you see before you open the brochure, is the same banner, the same photo of the running bisons, and the same image of the dessicated Asian water buffalo skeleton as an insert.

When you unfold the brochure once, you see two panels. The top half of the panel on the right has the dessicated Asian water buffalo skeleton again with, in superimposed white letters,"Joel Giambra says Buffalo can't be fixed without killing local control of city services."

The lower half of that panel is a business reply postcard, "first class mail permit no. 1434 Buffalo, NY postage will be paid by addressee." The addressee is "SAVE OUR CITY" with the same post office box address I already typed for you.

In the middle of the panel on the left are two lines of type in big letters: "We say they're both wrong. Join the fight to save Buffalo." Above that text are three photographs, two large, one small. The two large photos were both taken in the same place. I don't recognize the place; it doesn't look like anything I've ever seen in Buffalo.

The photo on the left shows all or part of seven black adults, six of them male, one of them female. The woman is in the background. One of the men wears a dark blue t-shirt with what looks like a shield. Another wears a white t-shirt with the words "no police layoff! save our city." The man in the blue t-shirt holds a poster that says, in red letters:

AYOFF
CROOKS
T COPS !!!
The man in the white t-shirt holds a poster that says, in green letters,
SAVE
OUR
CITY !!


The photographs on the right has six white men (four of them with moustaches, three of them wearing baseball caps, one of which says "PBA"), and one white woman. She is in the background. One man holds aloft a sign that says

FIRE
THE
MAYOR


Another holds a sign that says

NYSBALONEYFORU.COM
I assumed that was a url, so I tried it on my web browser but I only got a message saying no such address existed. I tried it with a "W" in front, in case something was blocking that letter, but that also came up with a message saying no such address existed. I don't know why they'd have a picture of a guy holding a big sign advertising a web site that doesn't exist. It's a real puzzlement. Keep reading: there are others.
[After this article was posted, three readers wrote in to tell me that the site does exist and that the full url is www.tonysbalonyforu.com, which is administered by one Clarence Carnahan of 368 Grant Street in Buffalo. Don't bother going there: I checked out the site; It is preternaturally stupid.]
Another man in that picture holds a sign that says, in red,
LAYO
CROO
NOT CO
I assume that's like one of those puzzles where you have to fill in the missing letters. This one could be "Layoff crooners not cockatoos," but, given the context and the other hints, I think the answer is "Layoff crooks not cops." Nothing in the brochure says which crook might deserve laying off by whom, but maybe that's just because this is just a poster a guy in the photo happened to be holding, not something put there by the designer of the brochure. Maybe not.

A small photograph covers a small portion of the lower middle area of the two photographs of the people with the signs. This photo has three kids, maybe 10 years old, two boys and one girl, each holding a cardboard sign. The girl is on the right; her sign is bleached out. The sign held by the boy on the left says, in blue, "rescue our heros." The sign held by the boy in the middle says, in red, "rescue our heros September 9-11." Both signs have two American flags.

Below the photos and the two lines of red text are two paragraphs followed by a line in big purple type. The two paragraphs say:

Times are bad in Buffalo. Taxes are high, jobs are gone and the city under Tony Masiello has spent itself into such a hole that schools and public safety will take another round of massive cuts.

To make matters worse, some politicians want to shut down fire stations, close police precincts and close schools without asking what we think is best. We need regionalism that puts Buffalo first, instead of taking away local control of important neighborhood decisions.

The line in big purple type says, "It doesn't have to be this way."

What's weird here is, the whole idea of regionalism DOESN'T put any city, town or village first. It abolishes that kind of small thinking and goes big, then works its way in. Regionalism is the opposite of neighborhood thinking. Whoever wrote this seems to be saying that we need regionalism so we can have neighborhood control. That means whoever wrote this doesn't understand or care about any of this, is trying to confuse us, or is a moron.

When you open the right panel, you see two more panels, one in the middle and one on the right.

The middle panel has a red bar at the top with "Buffalo has made it through tougher times than this" in white letters. Below it are three photos, each showing members of a different ethnic group doing something nice.

The photo on the left shows an old black woman helping a young black girl ride what looks like a small two-wheeler without training wheels. Well, to tell you the truth, you can't see whether the bike has training wheels or not, but it's tilted the way a bike without training wheels tilts, and the girl has the look of adventure on her face I don't remember any kid riding a bike with training wheels every having.

The middle photo shows a grinning white man man in his thirties painting a white picket fence while a smiling teen age white boy holding a paint brush and a smiling white-haired older white woman in a silly sweatshirt look on approvingly.

The photo on the right shows a girl of maybe eight writing or coloring while a pretty woman in her twenties looks on, obviously pleased. To the right of them a young boy talks to a man, the two of them out of focus. There are bowls of cereal and cups near the kids. I can't tell if the people in this photo are supposed to be Hispanic or Asian, which is a good thing because it if were clear that they were one or the other, then there would have to be another photograph so no major interest group was left out.

The lower half of that center panel is all text.

Big dark blue letters: "Blizzards. Plant closings. Political squabbles."

Small black letters: "Buffalo has always overcome problems when neighborhood people come together to take control."

Well, that is nonsense, isn't it?

Slightly large bold blue italics: "Now is the time to do it again."

How can you do again something that only worked now and then before?

Big red letters: "The first step: Taking control of local politics."

The first step in what?

Then a paragraph in small black type again:

For over 70 years, the Democratic Party served Buffalo well. But after 8 years of Tony Masiello's failures, it's time for new blood to take over at the grassroots level around an agenda that makes sense for Buffalo's future:
Are the anonymous authors and designers of this card mad at the Democratic Party or Tony Masiello? Which failures of his in particular will this new blood on the grassroots fix? Has Tony Masiello failed the Democratic Party, has the Democratic Party failed Tony Masiello, or has everybody failed everybody? Who or what are they really mad at? Are the anonymous authors and designers of this card Democrats? Republicans? Commies? Anarcho-syndicalists?

The five bulleted items in their new agenda, which occupy the bottom of the page, don't shed much light.

I'd sure like to know which wasteful spending they'd like to cut. And if they're cutting spending and holding the line on taxes, where the investment money for neighborhood schools is going to come from as well as the salaries for the additional police. And just how they're going to attract small business back to the city and whether the jobs come with those small businesses or if they're an extra.

The final page doesn't answer any of that, but it does come up with a call for action.

The first two lines, in big red type: "Be the Man, (or the Woman!) Run for County Committee."

Then, in small black type, an explanation:

Local committeemen and women run the Democratic Party. They help decide who runs for office with the party's endorsement, organize local support and play a key role in getting the City Council to listen to neighborhood concerns. In short, they are the people that politicians listen to in your neighborhood.
You mean the pols don't listen to me or my neighbors and the primaries are a waste of time? Gosh darn!

Then, again in big red letters: "It's easy to run for local committee. Fill out this postcard and send it in today!"

Well, it's easy to hope for eternal life too, but, so far as I know, it's really hard being successful at it. How easy is it getting on the local committee and being the Man (or the Woman!) Who makes those key decisions?

They don't bother with that. Instead, in small black type, they say

The Save Our City Committee will mail you a packet that gives you simple step-by-step instructions on how to run for committeeman or women in your neighborhood, and begin taking back control of our city.
Then, slightly larger blue italics: "Don't let the politicians run Buffalo down anymore."

The bottom is the back of the postcard I told you about before. On the top is a red bar with white letters saying, "YES, I will join the fight! I want to help Save Buffalo." Below that is a white area with spaces for your name, address, home phone, work phone, email address. And below that, on a pale yellow field, are three boxes ready to be checked. One box is "Send me a county committee packet." The next is "I will volunteer in my neighborhood." The third is "I will put up a yard sign."

That's the document. It's really pretty, as I said, and I bet it cost whoever sent it out a bunch of money.

I've mentioned some questions I had going through it, panel by panel. And now that we're all done, I'm still left with more.

Begin with those three options I can check off on the postage-paid card.

There's another question: the opening panels of this card and much of the text seemed to be attacking Buffalo Mayor Anthony Masiello, but the card never says anything specific about him. There won't be a mayoral election in Buffalo for three years, so it's highly unlikely that the anonymous people who paid for this very large mailing are targeting Anthony Masiello right now. Finally, why should any of us take seriously people who are willing to spend a lot of money to smear, but who don't have the decency or guts to admit who they really are?

P.S.: In the weeks after this appeared, just about everyone who wrote or commented on this scurrilous mailing said it probably had been commissioned by Erie County Democratic Party chairman Steven Pigeon, who is currently fighting with almost everybody and whose chairmanship is very much at risk. Pigeon has refused to comment on the mailing. If the mailing was in fact Pigeon's, two key questions remain: whose money did he use and was it legal to use that money that way? (3 June 2002)
 
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