Civic and Political Speech-Making in New York City

Luke 1

Luke Heywood

Professor David Hoffman

17 January 2016

Notes on Mayor Giuliani’s NYC State of the City Speech 2000

INTERPRETIVE SUMMARY

This speech by Mayor Giuliani was given against the backdrop of start of the new millennium in New York City. There was much fear surrounding Y2K, and much confusion about the possible pending collapse of the digitized world. As New York celebrated the start of the new year and a new millennium, he wanted to the city to recognize the great strides that New York had made by symbolically referring to two Time Magazine covers – one in 1990 and one less than two weeks old (January 1, 2000). One described “The Rotting of the Big Apple” and the other – 10 years later – showcasing the current beauty of Times Square at midnight. Ten years prior New York was viewed as the crime capital and the welfare capital of America. Mayor Giuliani, who was not sure whether this was going to be his final State of the City Speech – wanted to show the growth of the city away from “high crime, swelling welfare rolls, cyclical bankruptcy, and fleeing jobs.” He credited changes in philosophy and approaches, for the positive direction of the city in the areas of crime reduction, school safety, domestic violence prevention, education reform, welfare reform, care for the homeless, and economic development projects in healthcare, homeownership, and job creation. He wanted to reestablish New York City as the Cultural Capital of the World – a city of optimism and that embraced new ideas. He saw New York as the perfect city for the 2012 Olympics.

The tone of the speech was quite pleasant but yet firm. There was a sense of relief coming from Mayor Giuliani as he admitted to not being sure what to expect from the turning of the century just 12 days prior. He expressed relief that nothing terrible had happen. Mayor Giuliani’s word choice was simple throughout the speech and this helped to make him seem more relatable, even as he quoted statistics and challenged the status quo of unions and the Board of Education. Because the language of the speech was not elevated, there were very few rhetorical devices used to express his ideas. The main metaphor that portrayed the city’s progress was that of the change in Time Magazine covers from a rotting apple in 1990 to a glowing New York City in Times Square in January.

The most outstanding aspect of the speech is that the Mayor is able to communicate his vision for reform and advancement while keeping the overall tone of his speech light. I consider this outstanding because a lot of the change in approaches and philosophy being mentioned at the time were quite often against the grain of what many would deem to be the normal course of operation e.g. the existence of the Board of Education and teacher tenure.

MAJOR EVENTS

The major event that preceded the State of the City Address and affected the life of the city and the life of the mayor was the New Year itself. The world and the city had been awaiting the consequences of the Y2K bug which threatened to be like Armageddon. In the larger scope of the country, the US Senate opened an impeachment trial of President Clinton (Jan. 7) and in April of 1999, two students had stormed Columbine High School in Littleton, killing many students and a teacher.

Another notable fact about Mayor Giuliani’s administration is that a year and two months before this State of the City Address, city commissioner were sent a memorandum asking them to find $600 million to $700 million in budget cuts for fiscal year 2000 (Barnes 1998).

Mr. Giuliani was also in the process of raising the $15 million to $20 million he needs for the United States Senate race. His closest advisors however were not sure that he was in a position to win the race against Hillary Clinton.

CONTEXT

Mr. Giuliani’s speech was made before a packed City Council chamber of invited supporters and television cameras (Bumiller 2000). Mr. Giuliani began his speech by pointing out the backdrop of the Times Square celebration, which had special significant to him. Mayor Giuliani, used “charts, drawings, a coffee mug and a firefighter's infrared camera as props to help keep his listeners alert” (Bumiller 2000). An interesting point to note is that the mayor delivered his address “ambling around a small stage without notes, a lectern and a teleprompter” (Bumiller 2000).

REACTION

The media the next day described Mr. Giuliani’s State of the City speech as theatrical and highlighted the fact that most of it felt like a good-bye message while a smaller portion of the speech felt like an announcement of his US Senate run (Bumiller 2000). They focused their attention on the mayor’s stance on education and the need to take on the unions and interest groups, so that the focus is on educating students and not on protecting teachers who were not producing results. They made mention of the fact that “the textless presentation did cause the mayor to forget a major proposal his aides had disclosed to reporters - $2 billion in commercial and business tax cuts over the next four years. The media made mention of the humor of his speech and his three new proposals: “a state-of-the-art laboratory for DNA testing of people suspected of crimes; an ''aggressive driving'' program that would take away the cars of people arrested for not just drunken driving but reckless driving; and the addition of up to 200 heat-seeking infrared cameras to help firefighters determine the source of a blaze” (Bumiller 2000).

SPEECHWRITER

Some research revealed that John Avlon was Mayor Giuliani’s speechwriter. Whether it was John who worked on this specific speech or not, we do not know.

EVENTS AND TERMS EXPLAINED

Mayor Giuliani said, “I also have to admit to you that I was very nervous, and I was afraid. I was afraid that something would go wrong . . . that despite the great planning of the Police Department, and of emergency personnel, that some terrible thing would happen to harm people or hurt the City.”Although is now focused on sports, concerts and theater today, before the year 2000 this website would have been flooded with information about the pending disasters associate with the turn of the century and ways to prepare for a world that was about to go back to 1900 digitally. Even economists believed that there was a “70 percent chance that Year 2000 breakdowns will usher in a worldwide recession” (Feder 1999). This fear went all the way up to the highest office. “U.S. Pres. Bill Clinton in October 1998 signed the Year 2000 Information and Readiness Disclosure Act. The law was designed to encourage American companies to share Y2K data by offering them limited liability protection for sharing information about Y2K products, methods, and best practices” (

Mayor Giuliani referred to a crime-fighting philosophy called "Broken Windows" theory.

Other smaller states had reduced crime by focusing on small crimes. The thought process behind the theory was that if you don't focus on small crime neighborhoods will get out of control and serious crimes will get even worse. This theory was proposed in 1982 and linked disorder and incivility within a community to subsequent occurrences of serious crime. For Mayor Giuliani to commit a big city to this strategy for two to three years was quite controversial because most people believed that it would be more effective to go after major drug dealers than graffiti artists and police offers themselves could think that they didn’t have enough time to focus on small offences. The "Broken Windows” theory did not only help reduce crime but also gave the city a new look and feel.

The CompStat program was also credited for the shifting of the Police Department's emphasis from arresting people to reducing crime. CompStat short for COMPuter STATistics involved 70 plus precincts collecting and reporting on crime stats on a daily basis in order the target the source of crimes. The leaders of the precincts met every week to report on their numbers and to map this information. This ensured that the New York City Police Departments more accountable and infused a sort of healthy competition between precincts to reduce crime.

Mayor Giuliani also announced the expansion of the TRACK Program.This was a program focused on stopping truancy. It did not only involve picking up kids but also contacted parents to make them away of the children’s activities.

In the speech Mayor Giuliani made fun of the Mafia and the fact that he had reduced their influence and had taken about $750 to $800 million out of the hands of the mob influenced carting industry and returned it directly to people who run businesses in the City.The mayor had an interesting history with the Mafia that preceded the speech by more than 10 years. Between 1985 and 1986 during the Mafia Commission Trial, Giuliani, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York at the time, indicted eleven organized crime figures, including the heads of New York's so-called "Five Families", under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) on charges including extortion, labor racketeering, and murder for hire. He was known for going after the “big fish” on Wall Street and dismantling the infrastructure of organized crime. Reading the speech today, one would not have necessarily known the historical significance of his relationship with the Mafia.

PEOPLE AND PLACES

At the beginning of the speech Mayor Giuliani makes reference to Time Square and uses it to show the stark contrast in the image of New York City compared to ten years prior. At the end of the speech Mayor Giuliani used Lincoln Center as the symbol that made New York the Cultural Capital of the World. The mayor also used this place as a model of infrastructural transformation and demonstrated the effect that its development and expansion had on people and businesses on the West Side of Manhattan. He wanted to convince Madison Square Garden to move a few blocks in order to develop the lower West Side of Manhattan in a similar way in which Lincoln Center had developed the Upper West Side. He wanted to use these places as the impetus for producing jobs and to reinforce New York as the Capital of the World.

Mayor Giuliani mentioned very many prominent government officials during his speech as well. Some of these included Speaker Vallone, Governor Pataki, and the Heads of the Police Department, and the Fire Department. He mentioned these men to praise the partnerships and also to give the audience a sense of government working harmoniously together to fix the people’s problems. He called on the Police Commissioner, Medical Examiner Hirsh, and Steve Fishner, the Criminal Justice Coordinator, to work on establishing a state-of-the-art DNA laboratory for New York City. This again gave the listener the sense that there was major collaboration and interdisciplinary work being down to find solutions to the city’s challenges.

He also called criminals names and gave details of their crimes to remind the public of their atrocities and to make the case of better technology and science in preventing similar crimes in the future. I thought that this was very effective.

By mentioning the names of other cities and the work they were doing in educating children, Mayor Giuliani was able to create feelings of “why not us?” He reference to the location of the Board of Education - 110 Livingston Street – created a focal point for those frustrated with the education system to cast their blame. The Mayor’s plans to move and downsize the home of the Board of Education also painted a picture of a shrinking bureaucracy – a welcomed sound for parents and citizens concerned by the ineffective operation of the education system and the deplorable results that followed.

The homeless were also a population of focus. The fact that the mayor renamed the homeless facilities from "shelters" to "New START Centers” also indicates that names of places can signify specific things and the Mayor wanted to disassociate himself from the negative impressions of shelters. For him "New START Centers" signified Self-sufficiency, Treatment, Addiction-control, Rehabilitation, and Training.

The East River was also another place of focus. The Mayor wanted to develop both side of the river. This also gave the listener a sense of balance and fairness with respect to communities on the side of the river that were not yet developed. He wanted to let Brooklyn and Queens communities know that they were included in his development plans. He also promised that the same development that Downtown Manhattan experienced would be expanded to Fordham Road in the Bronx and the Kingsbridge Armory as well. Without using the words equal opportunity the Mayor was painting a picture of places that would all experience the same level of development irrespective of their populations. He spoke of the St. George Development Project in Staten Island in a similar fashion as well.

SIGNIFICANT QUOTATIONS

The Mayor said, “there are a number of things that we are going to do this year, which hopefully will create big reductions for next year, and in years to come. Probably the most important of them is to put New York in the forefront of new technologies for investigating crimes-technologies that will help us solve more crimes, and clear innocent people.” He was an avid supporter of using DNA testing in fighting crime and in preventing innocent individuals from being falsely convicted of crimes. He wanted New York City not only be a leader in the Arts but in Science and Technology.

The Mayor also stated repeatedly that “the purpose of our school system is to educate our children more effectively each year.” He was concerned that the core focus of the education system was on protecting teachers’ jobs rather than impacting educational outcomes. He wanted to dismantle the tenure system and institute a merit-based payment system, where the teachers who helped students perform best were paid best. He wanted to bring an end to the bureaucracy and backroom deals of the prior era and completely do away with the Boards of Education, like in Chicago. He repeatedly said “we don't need a Board of Education.” He did not believe that they managed the system well and was unpleased with the decline in results over the past decade. He was not afraid to challenge the power unions and the special interests. He stated “the leadership of this City isn't listening to the people but is listening to the unions.” He intended to change this trend and made aggressive moves to do so.

Lastly, the quote that resonated with me most was that “the genius of America is the idea that you can be anything you want to be if you work hard enough to get there.” Mayor Giuliani used this core value of freedom and opportunity to remind the City of the promise of America and the responsibility they had to play their part in removing barriers and the inequalities that made it difficult for the average person to experience greater social mobility. He also made it clear that “economic development is not just building new things.” He emphasized the need to preserve those things that they created. His speech sought to instill optimism in the hearts and minds of New Yorkers and appealed to them to embrace new ideas.

KEY TERMS

I have defined many key terms earlier but there are a few others that may be worth mentioning. The first key term “Aggressive Driving” was used to shed light on a scenario where there was a large reduction in the number of people killed by drunk drivers, and a fair reduction in the number of drunk driving accidents, but an increase in the overall number of fatalities. The Mayor explained this key term and shared his solutions to address the challenge.

Another key term was the concept of “Self-sufficiency.” The Mayor wanted to show the trend away from New York being seen as a Welfare State - glorifying dependency and undermining the work ethic – toward a state that could be seen as the leader in every major area of city governance and leadership.

The last key term not previously defined, is the Mayor’s concept of “economic development.” His plan was specifically focused on the privatization of healthcare, providing better opportunities for homeownership, and enhancing job creation possibilities from various city development initiatives.