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Opening Slate: The Eleventh Hour, Show #101, Apocalypse New York

The Eleventh Hour show opener. Countdown clock.

Host Lipsyte announces tonights guests: Judge Bruce Wright, Author-Jack Newfield and people living on the streets of New York City.

Clip from the tabloid talk show "Geraldo" hosted by journalist, Geraldo Rivera. Angry black man gets up from his chair after white man calls him "Uncle Tom" on live tv and attempts to strangle white man.

Young man in court room in witness box reading from piece of paper he holds in his hands. He states he is sorry to "Mrs. Griffith for your senseless loss".

Footage of the demolition of huge public housing complex in Newark, New Jersey, late 1980's. Building collapsing, clouds of smoke billowing up, onlookers watching in foreground

Close up on heavily bearded homeless man in wool cap

Cut to then US Attorney for Southern District of New York, Rudolph Giuliani, speaks at press conference about the current scandal involving organized crimes' alliance with the Teamsters.

Close up infant in incubator, hooked up to wires and tubes

African American male activist with mic - states, "they're giving us free needles now, next they'll be giving us free heroin.

Bronx Congressman Mario Biaggio walking into building surrounded by cameras and reporters. Typed subtitle reads, "Bronx Congressman Biaggi gets 5 years in racketeering scandal".

Curtis Sliwa, leader of the Guardian Angels, wearing red beret talks to reporters.

Government building in Yonkers New York sitting up on a hill, angry mob in forefront. Typed subtitle reads: "Yonkers fined $1 million a day for delaying housing desegregation law"

African American, Larry Davis, convicted of drug dealer's '86 murder and known for his shootout with the police I The Bronx where six officers were shot. He was acquitted.

Montage of clips, general chaos, riots, violence late '80s - scene of accident on highway with dead body wrapped in white sheet, crowd of police officers restraining crowd of African Americans with clubs, making arrests, protestors, police chasing people, man with bloodied face, weighing cocaine on scale, perp walk, violence on live tv, Geraldo Rivera holding handkerchief to bloodied nose.

Interview with Judge Bruce Wright. (INTERVIEW INSERTED)
I don't think anything really radically different happened. I think it's the mixture of before perhaps a slightly different form of the mixture. We still have lots of crime. We still have injustice, we still have lots of racism in this city, perhaps more so than in the south, without any apparent possibility that we'll have the same kind of outrage and demonstrations here that were accomplished in the south. Why is that?
Well, we had a different kind of leadership from the White House for example, with with Johnson, and with Kennedy to some degree. We haven't had that under under Reagan. Reagan has made the civil rights movement, something like dim skywriting on a windy midnight, just a thing of the past. He's been against affirmative action. He's been against what he calls quotas, which means he's been up against minority interest. That's all the setback this country to a certain degree.

Bruce Wright: Oh, because we have a conservative mood in the country. The whole country is so conservative that the ethical culture society had a sermon recently entitled, when the country turns right, what's left. You saw what happened to the caucus, for example, The L Word, which was held up to great disrepute. It used to be a great honor to be a liberal. No longer the conservatives are in full cry. Now

Justice Wright: I hope so. I hope it's cyclical and I hope that the turn will be for the better although I'm not terribly optimistic.

Justice Bruce Wright:
It makes me think of an old Latin expression we hadn't first year Latin who should guard the guardians themselves. When the police are asked to live in New York City, what is their reaction? their reaction is is too dangerous for them and their families. Indeed, who shall guard the guardians themselves? They fled with respectable whites to the to the suburbs with their mortgages and, and their respectability, and, and their prejudices. And that's a problem. On the other hand, I now see white flight coming back into the city to occupy these glittering high rise. Residential towers.

Justice Wright:
Well, I always think that blacks do their own gentrification. There are some of us who think that we are Gentry as well. But you're right about whites coming back to Harlem and the expenses certainly cannot be afforded by the usual residents of Harlem certainly can't be afforded by me. $900 a month for a small studio is a lot in Harlem may not be so much in the East 60s,

Justice Wright:
No, he's not fiddling while Rome burns. He's been the arsonist.

Justice Wright:
He's made a pact with the wealthy landlords and developers. He has neglected, good, solid abandoned stock in the city that could be rehabilitated for the homeless instead of them sleeping in the parks. What's the trick? I mean, what what what are they after? They're after real estate, I suppose. And perhaps they want to make this an all white city. It's already a city of the very poor and the very rich.

Justice Wright:
A lot of people have thought that they started with religion, especially during days of slavery, when they retired, they must love their master, and they must not do anything to harm him. And we have something of the same situation. Now I suppose with drugs. I'm astonished that nothing can be done about drugs. Once somebody becomes an addict, I think they're finished, is nothing at anybody apparently can do about addiction. And I just think it's ridiculous to give them clean needles. And the next step, I suppose, is to give them clean heroin or weakly incorrect. I don't know what to do. And the answer to that question would deserve a Nobel prize? I'm sure.

Justice Wright:
Society has written off the poor people in this city, mostly the...

Judge Wright: I'm telling you what societies I haven't written them off. I'm not in charge of anything other than being fair and impartial.

Judge Wright: Oh, you mean, prosecute the developers and the Mayor?

Justice Wright: Absolutely. Uh huh. I would try. (I would charge them with..) Being a steward for the rich, basic inhumanity, being an expert and how to divide and rule this city? pit the Hispanics against the blacks, the blacks against the Hispanics and the Jews. That's what I would charge him with.

Justice Wright: Absolutely. And I see it every day and I assume that other people do it's, it's difficult to miss I ride the subways. I take shortcuts through the park. I see how people are living even in these frigid temperatures sleeping outside still groveling in garbage cans, and Koch says he has improved the city made it a better place to live.

Robert Lipsyte reporting live in Grand Central Station, interviews talking head African American male about homelessness and how the city and big businesses benefitting from the homeless.

Talking heads discuss with Lipsyte (unseen) how hard it is to afford to live in NYC, taxes are not going where they should, corruption, the master plan is to make all the services as profitable as possible to do this you get rid of or hidie the underclass or the indigents who are the back-bone of the city.

Returning to the studio with Host Robert Lipsyte and guest. Lipsyte introduces Deputy City Editor of the Daily News, Jack Newfield.
Interview Begins:
Host Lipsyte: $50,000 you well you should be okay this year you're Deputy City Editor of The Daily News and you've got a new hit book, "City for Sale" out. But Jack, in 1968 jack Newfield was a young reformer with a typewriter writing for The Village Voice...

Host Lipsyte: Well what happened when I was cutting the grass, you tell me.

Lipsyte: Yeah, but that was that was 20 years ago and and the people that you write about all these kind of crooks in City for Sale, they all started as reformist formers

Jack Newfield:
No, I think that people like Koch and Manis and others we wrote about in the book I didn't. They viewed politics as a game of musical chairs and early in their careers. They saw the chair called reform was vacant and they sat in it until they can become voices.

Lipsyte: It was trendy like playing tennis
Jack Newfield: Well for some people it wasn't for some it wasn't. But I think that people like Koch particularly.

Lipsyte: Well did they fool you?
Jack Newfield:
Well Koch didn't. But Manis did.

Lipsyte: I saw pictures of you with your arms around Esposito and people like that just like to hang out with rogues and prize fighters, or did you think that they really were going somewhere with the city they were really doing something?

Lipsyte: Let me read you something in terms of pinpointing these people. This. This is from Mayor LaGuardia in 1933. That's even worse. The bastards broke the people's back with a usury, let them die. The people will survive the bankers, the bond mongers, the public utility whores, the lawyers, those pimps for wall street, and the board judges who sided with the powerful and bless their crimes, thieving sons of bitches in robes. that's still true.

Jack Newfield: Yes, yeah. I think the point is, we need a new LaGuardia to to clean up the cesspool of government
Lipsyte: Hey but this is the sense of you know, we're still waiting for Superman, the hero, the guy in a white horse, and the never come or if they come, they get knocked off, or they turn bad.

Jack Newfield: In terms of race relations.
Lipsyte: yeah right now.
Jack Newfield: in terms of right now? What do you do for this, like the homeless problem? Yes, there's now a bill in the city council, to outlaw warehousing by landlords who hoard apartments, keep them off the market. There were about 50,000 warehouse departments Koch and Peter Villone the leader of the City Council, Robert Lipsyte: and that's specifically would be something that...
Jack Newfield:
that would be concrete and could be done tomorrow about homelessness. There's another bill in the city council.
Robert Lipsyte
Because there's something that I think that bothers a lot of people. And I guess you know, I left I left in '68 "white flight", I'm back but of the people I left the city in charge of you, I left you in charge of the city. And I don't want to put it all on your shoulders. But you're here with us, the kind of the liberals. Well, when we consider the liberals let us down. They became flabby, they had promised that they were going to make things better that they were going to reform. They were going to care. And they just kind of gave it over. I mean Trump's the Mayor now.

Lipsyte: If New York had a decent Mayor, likeFiorello LaGuardia, we wouldn't be in the pickle we aren't. Do you think we're in the 11th hour?
Jack Newfield: I think things are very bad. I think particularly in terms of race relations. I see incidents on the subways. flare ups. I see the way people hear the way people talk I am I think that is the most is the most manageable.
Robert Lipsyte
There is a terrible meanness and yet City for Sale is a hopeful book isn't it?
Jack Newfield
It's hopeful book and I think it will lead to was not just a different Mayor but a better mayor.
Robert Lipsyte:
JACK, thanks very much. We've got to leave it there. We've been talking with jack Newfield, author of City for Sale earlier with Judge Bruce Wright. I'm sure we all have more to say to each other. I have more to say and I'll be right back.

The Eleventh Hour show graphics.

Show ends, credits over clips from the program.

Reel ends