Mayor Dinkins Deserved to Witness Rudy’s Decline

Wondering Thoughts about America’s Real Mayor, in Memoriam

I wonder when you last walked down 125th street. Did you smile? Were you proud? Was this your vision for uptown or a perversion of it?

I wonder when you last went to a Broadway play? Who performed? What did you think of the “progress” around the theater?

Surely you understood the plight of the protestors; and even if you didn’t, you certainly understood receiving the enmity of policemen. I wonder if you marched with the people in spirit? Did you think we did enough? Did we do to much?

Did we do anything at all?

I wonder what you thought of Obama. Your candidacy, stature, and criticism as the “first Black” predicated and predicted much of what Barry endured. How much was inevitable? How much was avoidable? Did you impart any wisdom? Did he ask for any?

I do not wonder about Rudy.

I am not a New Yorker; I am simply a Southern admirer. But I am a man. A Black man. A (maybe more) proud, (probably less) intelligent Black man, like you. I know how you felt about him. I know he took credit for things you started. I know he claimed ownership over economic and crime trends that, in retrospect, were shared with other cities that were not lorded over by his fascist rule and a gestapo-like police force. I know it’s was painful yet precedent (so precedent) that “America’s Mayor” was little more than a racist opportunist.

But I wonder: were you able to witness his rapid decline? Did you see his hand in his pants? The dye dropping from his hair down his rancid scalp? His teeth, rotten and broken, a manifestation of his spirit?

I hope you saw it all.

I know you are a better man than I, but I hope in those moments you were as proudly petty as I; that you took in his fall from grace with lucidity. It is haughty of me to say God owed you; for who truly knows the ways of the Lord? But dear mayor, I pray the moral arc of the universe bent just enough to allow you to look and laugh before your final leap into the Light.

You were not perfect. No man is, though Black politicians are often expected to be. You were, however, enough. Everyone, from the barista at the Starbucks to the doorman in downtown Brooklyn; from the banker in the financial district to the bus driver in bed-stuy owes you a bit of thanks for trying to create the city they’ve still yet to see.

I hope you are able to receive that today, wherever you are, as you take in wonders we’ve yet to imagine.

Rest well.