Philadelphia Story
DiIulio, John J. Jr.
Philadelphia Story What urban America could learn from Frank Rizzo, one of the country's most infamous city politicians by John J. Dilulio, Jr. Frank Rizzo: The Last Big Man in Big City...
...Kanefsky made sure the mayor "had a cup of coffee, a fresh pack of Kents, and a book of matches on his desk each morning...
...But Rizzo raided the Panthers' Philadelphia headquarters in August, confiscating shotguns, rifles, and pistols...
...Paolantonio records Rendell's reflection on the call: "Here's the mayor of Philadelphia calling me, frantic, to take care of two ordinary black cops . . . what so-called liberal would ever do that...
...The contrast wasn't lost on the city's black community...
...is a professor of politics and public affairs at Princeton and nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution...
...For example, in 1970, the Black Panthers declared war on police officers nationwide and called for a "revolutionary people's convention" to be held in Philadelphia in September...
...The bombing resulted in the deaths of six adults and five children and incinerated a struggling black neighborhood of 61 homes...
...Frank Rizzo: The Last Big Man in Big City America S.A...
...Full disclosure: I worked against Rizzo's charter change effort and against Rizzo-backed candidates in several city-wide elections...
...The faces of the mourners were white, black, and brown...
...Rizzo was at his best, however, with the countless average people in whom he took a direct, personal interest and for whom he did favors...
...In stultifying heat and humidity, the lines at Rizzo's funeral stretched for blocks around the cathedral...
...Paolantonio explains Rizzo's my-cops-right-or-wrong philosophy but wisely makes no attempt to justify or excuse it...
...Chillinq...
...Drawing expertly on hundreds of sources ranging from Riz-zo's heretofore tight-lipped widow, Carmella, to his political confidants, including Richard Nixon, Paolantonio combines first-rate biography with compelling political analysis to produce a remarkably revealing book on urban personalities, politics, and policies...
...His name became a political Rorschach test on the question of how to deal with black urban unrest...
...In 1991, Rizzo decided to make one last effort to recapture the mayor's office...
...Presidents consulted him...
...Rizzo Redux During his second term as mayor, Rizzo tried to change the city's charter, which imposed a two-term limit...
...The delegation's first stop was Princeton University...
...Rizzo was Philadelphia's Democratic mayor from 1972 to 1980...
...He criticized the performance of public schools and took on teachers' unions when to do so was neither politically fashionable nor expedient...
...In 1985, Goode had presided over the police bombing of a home occupied by the radical black back-to-nature group MOVE...
...At the coffee break following my presentation, several delegates asked follow-up questions on topics ranging from federalism (how it really works) to junk bonds (where to buy them...
...Paolantonio concludes that, had Rizzo lived, he would be mayor today...
...He implemented plans to preserve and invest in urban neighborhoods before Kempites invented enterprise zones and Clintonites reinvented them as empowerment zones...
...And it remains a "city of neighborhoods" where life can be fulfilling and affordable for everyone from old working-class families to newly-arrived yuppies...
...Kanefsky, who today sells newspapers on a downtown Philadelphia streetcorner, "says he owes Frank Rizzo his life...
...The city has renegotiated contracts with public employees and improved its bond rating...
...The mafia would not deal drugs in the city because of him...
...He died, but the city he loved did not...
...For Philadelphia, it was a human tragedy and a national public relations fiasco...
...True, ultimately...
...He was more powerful than Chicago's Daley yet more beloved than New York's La Guardia...
...Paolantonio's subject more than justifies the subtitle...
...As Paolantonio writes, Carmella Rizzo "greeted each mourner— lawyers and judges and police officers, truck drivers and waitresses and construction workers—like a member of the family...
...Rizzo asked Rendell to do him the "big favor" of getting jobs as county detectives for his two most trusted bodyguards, Tony Fulwood and Jimmy Turner...
...But one thing is certain: For urban America to survive and prosper, it must recapture the inclusive sense of community, the color-blind outrage at lawlessness, and the warm personal touch that are Frank Rizzo's ultimate legacy to the City of Brotherly Love...
...It maintains one of the lowest crime rates in urban America...
...At a time when "the cities" have edged their way back onto the national political agenda, here is a book about a particular city that holds general lessons about where post-LA...
...But in 1987, Rizzo, running as a Republican, made a comeback attempt against the city's first black mayor, Democrat Wilson Goode...
...I was there...
...It's impossible to know whether that's so...
...So much is true...
...He campaigned vigorously in the poor black neighborhoods where he had once been so despised...
...As he headed toward the November general election against Rendell, Rizzo focused on the black community, not only for electoral reasons, but for historical and personal ones...
...I told him Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and credited his nodding smile of recognition to Benjamin Franklin, the Philadelphia Orchestra, or perhaps hockey's Philadelphia Flyers (who mopped the floor with the Soviet national team in the seventies...
...The tragedy of Rizzo's career is that it wasn't until the year he died that his populist politics included blacks...
...In the days following the disaster, many recalled that in a Riz-zo-directed 1978 confrontation with MOVE, the only person to die was a police officer, James 50 The Washington Monthly/July/August 1993 Ramp...
...i stones challenge old assumptions and then linger in the mind...
...Many of the callers were black, and they got to hear and sense the humorous, compassionate, lay-down-his-life-for-you Rizzo that the city's white ethnics had long known...
...He held the line on inner-city crime when to do so was considered racist...
...The city's Republican chieftains opposed his bid for the nomination, but this time he did not merely stun them...
...Still, most observers gave Rizzo no chance of beating Goode...
...Forever scorned by the city's WASP establishment, he was finally embraced by its black leaders...
...front p.isc, Washington Post Book World "Often brilliant and invariably provocative.' —New York Times Book Review THE WAY WE NEVER WERE A31 ' J- I STEPHANIE COONTZ "Highly instructive reading fir any number of political candidates...
...The charter change effort fizzled, and it seemed for a while that Rizzo's political career was over...
...And while urban America's "big men" are gone, a new generation of competent and compassionate urban leaders, both men and women, have begun to arrive...
...Essential reading...
...New York Times Hook Review AT THE BOTTOM OF THE HELL The l.'\il'I.llll11UIl...
...Nevertheless, the truth remains that Rizzo was never willing to deal forthrightly with the members of the police department, both black and white, who were prone to use excessive force in dealing with black suspects...
...A month before Rizzo left office, Rendell, who was then the city's district attorney, received a panicked call from the mayor...
...When Kanefsky later became homeless, Rizzo dispatched his city solicitor to find an apartment for the little guy...
...In 1967, Rizzo became police commissioner...
...Rudolph von Bcrnuth, Save the Children New in paperback from jjjj BasicBooks A Division of HarperCoUinsPublishe...
...He defied the town's powerful Democratic machine in the seventies and rolled over its Republican machine in the eighties...
...After losing that election, Rizzo took to the airwaves with what quickly became the most popular radio call-in show in the Philadelphia region...
...Paolantonio, Camino Books, $22 In 1990, a delegation from the U.S.S.R.'s Supreme Soviet and Congress of People's Deputies came to America to explore the nuts and bolts of democracy and capitalism...
...Nor, for that matter, were the conciliatory gestures and words that Rizzo had begun to offer in an attempt to reach out to blacks...
...Eight years as mayor did nothing to weaken Rizzo's hands-on populist streak...
...Paolantonio recounts how in 1971 Rizzo befriended a campaign hanger-on named Abie Kanefsky, "a troll of a man" with "a crooked nose and the voice of a hard-drinking tugboat pilot...
...And then on July 16, 1991, on the eve of one of the most spectacular comebacks in the history of urban politics, he did the one thing that most Philadelphi-ans, life-long admirers and inveterate critics alike, never thought he would do: He died...
...But by that time the blind eye he turned to police brutality had mobilized the city's black community against him...
...He wanted to make up for the real and perceived wrongs he had committed against this part of the city family...
...Like his father before him, in 1943 he became a spit-and-polish beat cop...
...A great man of the people, true...
...Rizzo hadn't given the order to strip the Panthers...
...Rizzo was the "last big man in big city John J. Dilulio, Jr...
...The son of Italian immigrants, he grew up on the ethnic mean streets of South Philadelphia in the thirties and forties...
...riot urban America needs to go and how it might actually get there: by forceful leadership with a human touch...
...The seeds of this Philadelphia renaissance were planted by Rizzo...
...But one delegate asked where in the "States of America" I "had grown...
...The next day, a photograph of the Panthers' bare buttocks moved across the Associated Press wire...
...he was home in bed when that occurred...
...Known throughout the city as "the Cisco Kid" for his fearless first-in-action exploits against drug dealers and other criminals, he rose steadily through the ranks...
...But then he said, "Dear John, Philadelphia is the city of Rizzo...
...ofUadsiii "Stingingly effective...
...Local television news viewers were amazed by images of Rizzo leading anti-drug marches in black communities, rallying the crowds with the promise that he would restore order and revitalize the neighborhoods...
...For example, a story in the April 1993 issue of Governing magazine documents how well Philadelphia is doing under its present mayor, Ed Rendell...
...This time he won...
...And, July/August 1993/The Washington Monthly 49 above all else, he was a real, hands-on populist who gave Philadelphians the sense that they were part of one big extended family...
...But he wouldn't question the officers' action, and he wouldn't tolerate others questioning it either...
...As he grew into his 6'2", 250-pound frame, he grew into his reputation as the toughest good kid in the neighborhood, the type who didn't bully anybody but whom nobody, not even the local gangsters, dared to bully...
...They were stunned when Rizzo lost by fewer than 20,000 votes out of over 650,000 cast...
...S A. Paolantonio, an award-winning national reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, has written a dramatic yet scholarly book on the late tough-cop-turned-mayor Frank L. Rizzo...
...The Panthers were stripped naked and searched...
...He then called the landlord, "talked him down from $185-a-month to $125," and gave Kanefsky "an $8,000-a-year job making coffee at City Hall...
...When Rizzo died before the election, thousands of Philadelphians turned out to mourn him in person, while tens of thousands more mourned him at home...
...But, as he emerges from this well-balanced book, Rizzo was a flawed yet public-spirited man who saved a city and who came close to redeeming himself in the eyes of many who had long opposed him...
...Street punks feared him...
...Within a few months of his appointment he began to make national and international headlines...
...Washington Post Book World An urgent response to the challenges of our day: Somalia, Bosnia, and beyond...
Vol. 25 • June 1993 • No. 7
