The People Have Spoken Mr. Mayor!

"It's over! It's over! It's over!" could be heard across City Hall Park this afternoon as Norman Siegel led a press conference decrying Bloomberg's term limit power play. The people, starting with the fifty or so that came to the steps of City Hall on a Sunday are fighting against the Mayor and members of the Council that are trying to overturn the will of the voters by legislative fiat.

The hour-long event had speakers such as State Senator Eric Adams, Councilwoman Letitia James, activist Phil DePaolo, Democracy for New York City members Dan Jacoby, Josh Skaller and many other concerned citizens from across the five buroughs.

As one of those citizens that stood on the steps with a sign in hand, the energy was real and people were ticked off that the Mayor thinks he can get away with this. There are too many reasons to let Bloomberg and the council members in his pocket (like Quinn and Felder) to overrule the will of the people.

Just because we are in tough financial times, that does not mean that we should change the rules of the game with an election coming up. New Yorkers protested a similar power grab in 2001 and we should do the same now. As one speaker this afternoon pointed out, Bloomberg is a part of the "Wall Street" that got us in this mess in the first place. It is time for a new direction in this city, but if New York truly wants to get rid of term limits, they should do it in a referenda two years or more from now, when we aren't tempted to make rash decisions for one particular billionaire.

While the reaction to Bloomberg's quest to hold onto power (and name change to Hizzoner) has been mixed, plenty of groups are getting together to protest the Mayor and Council including a press conference held earlier at noon today. When the Council meets on Tuesday to begin the anti-Democratic process, there will be yet another group protesting the Mayor.

Protect Chinatown and LES will be out to talk about the Mayor's record he doesn't want you to know about. His re-zoning laws have radically changed the city into a high-rise version of the cookie-cutter suburbs. He's currently trying to do the same to Chinatown and the Lower East Side. With another four years of Bloomberg, these two neighborhoods and possibly others might meet a similar rezoning fate for the benefit of wealthy developers. The Mayor likes to talk about his $1 salary to distance himself from the special interests he loves, but we would have to add many zeroes to that number to understand the true cost of four more years under Michael Bloomberg.