From Norm Siegel's website:

NORMAN TO HOST ANNUAL JULY 4th CELEBRATION IN CENTRAL PARK

NYS Senators Bill Perkins and Eric Adams, Reverend Billy, the Granny Peace Brigade and Grandmothers Against the War to join in public reading of the Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights at 12 Noon, Strawberry Fields, Central Park.

Come join Norman and friends for this annual July 4th celebration of the anniversary of US Independence and the birth of our civil rights and civil liberties. In addition to the actual text of these historic documents, Norman invites everyone to add their comments and observations to the mix. In years past, this has provided a spirited and memorable way to kick-off the July 4th festivities. Come join us and start your Fourth of July with Norman, Eric Adams, Bill Perkins, the incomparable Reverend Billy, New York’s famous peace-loving grannies and your New York neighbors.

This last weekend Joy and I attended two events of political interest to New York. First I want to mention that on Saturday Joy participated in the 3rd annual Center for Anti-Violence Education's Punch-a-thon held in a very wet Grand Army Plaza entrance to Prospect Park. The Center for Anti-Violence Education (CAE) teaches women, children, teens, and LGBT individuals verbal and physical strategies to protect themselves and break cycles of violence in their lives and communities. CAE has a commitment to serving low-income families and offer our violence-prevention courses on a sliding fee scale. Courses for survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault are free of charge, and free childcare is available at all classes. The annual Punch-a-thon raises money to pay for self-defense and violence-prevention courses to those who can't afford it. I sponsored my wife in this event and she, like most of the participants, did 1000 punches. In all the event raised $5000 to date with more hopefully coming in. The political angle was that several elected officials had promised to show up.

Big Kick Off Fundraiser for Norm Siegel for Public Advocate

Monday, February 25th, 2008, 6pm to 8:30pm

Cafe Deville
103 Third Avenue (at 13th Street)
NYC

Let me just preface this with the comment that Joy Romanski, Marjorie Gersten and myself have already held a fundraiser for Norm Siegel...so maybe we should claim the Kick off fundraiser

Norman Siegel is the ideal candidate for NYC Public Advocate. In essence he has been our public advocate for decades, having been head of the NY Civil Liberties Union, defending the rights of NYC protestors against the 2004 Republican Convention, defending the rights of Critical Mass bicyclists, fighting destruction of Harlem neighborhoods, etc.

You can read more about my impressions of Norman Siegel here.

And you can attend this big, big fundraiser and meet the man himself:

Anyone who regularly reads Daily Gotham knows we don't like Vito Lopez, the head of the shady Democratic Party Machine in Brooklyn. That dislike has grown since Vito and his buddy, Dominic Recchia, endorsed a homophobic, grossly unqualified man (who has never even practiced law) for a judicial seat.

I am not going to revisit the many, many reasons Vito Lopez and his machine are distasteful embarrassments to those of us who like our Democrats to be better than the average corrupt Republican.

Instead I want to discuss a question I get asked by some Vito Lopez apologists: If not Vito, then who?

This question has a history. When considering how distasteful Vito is, one must realize that the party boss he replaced was Clarence Norman, a man whose corruption landed him in jail. Vito apologists like to point out that having a party boss who has yet to be indicted is better than what we used to have. In other words, one argument for Vito is that one of the alternatives is a return to those who were part of Clarence Norman's version of the machine.

[NOTE: Believe it or not, I was asked to clean up the language in the title...Yeah...on Daily Gotham we are cleaning up our language!]

So, there are some out there who get tired of my railing against "Vito Lopez and his Band of Ill Repute." But the truth is, what is deadly wrong with Brooklyn politics is what is business as usual within the Democratic Party. This year seemed to be a possible exception, but in the end I think it really will CONTINUE to be business as usual in the worst possible way.

One thing that the local political machine, currently headed by Vito Lopez, previously led by Clarence Norman, now in jail, was infamous for was putting comlpetely unqualified candidates up for judicial elections as part of a network of cronyism that would make Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff jealous. Judicial candidates who were rated as outright unqualified would be guided through with ease by Clarence and/or Vito simply to fulfill a favor or generate a favor. Favors were all that mattered, not qualifications, not quality, not actually quality governance.

Candidates to fill the late John Lavelle’s State Assembly seat, the openly Gay Matt Titone and Kelvin Alexander, a co-founder of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care accuse each other’s campaigns of bigotry according to Saturday’s Link TextStaten Island Advance.

Democratic Candidate Titone, who lost to Andrew Lanza in a November State Senate bid, has been challenging Alexander, the Independence Party candidate (But still a member of County Democratic Committee) and Democratic Brooklyn State Senator Eric Adams ‘s chief of staff’s petition signatures. Not signatures for his Independence candidacy, but those for his made up additional line, the Family First Party (Which has nothing to do with the Working Families Party).

Alexander finished a distant fourth at the Staten Island Democratic Committee’s nominating convention, but anticipating that secured the Independence nomination and began petitioning for his made up party line before the convention.

Alexander ridiculously asserted Titone’s challenging of his Family First Party signatures, many of which were allegedly from non-registered voters and people not living in the district marginalizes blacks, while Titone counters that the word “Family” in Kelvin’s party moniker could be a homophobic code word suggesting that Matt being Gay means he’s anti-family.