Brook-Krasny to Power and An Appeal to Ari Kagan

I start with the link to my article in the Jewish Week concerning Alec Brook-Krasny's historic election victory Tuesday night as the first Russian-speaker elected to statewide office.

http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=13245

some random thoughts not contained in above article:

The politically active Russian-speaking community remains sharply split between so-called 'establishment' Russians, who back B-K, and the self-styled 'narod' (in Hebrew 'amcha'), aka, the people--the poorer, less assimilated and elderly core of Brighton Beach and surrounding areas that strongly supported Ari Kagan. The BK crowd is not only the wealthy 'Russian elite'--the Wajnbergs, Frenkels, Sapirs, Kislins, Branovans and Shigliks of this world, but also many younger striving people who perceive that the Russian communtiy has to integrate into encroaching American reality even while retaining its distinctive identity, who are building professional careers in their own lives, and who appreciated B-K as a 'gramatnye' (educated, well-spoken) type who knows how to operate in the larger American world, who built solid ties both to the political powers that be (Nadler, Recchia, the Brooklyn machine) and to the American Jewish macherocracy.

The Kagan group manifests a lot of anger--as much against the Russian elite as against American society as a whole. A lot of them feel cut off and left behind--including a large bloc of retired people forced to subsist in their golden years in sub-standard often crime ridden apartment buildings on miserably small sustenance packages of of SSI, welfare and food stamps. Others are middle aged and younger people who have fallen through the cracks and haven't found their way in America. All of these people feel the Russian establishment has essentially abandoned them--feathering their own nests while some elderly Russians have literally been forced to pick through dumpsters to feed themselves while waiting for miniscule SSI checks which are immediately swallowed up to pay the rent. That elderly people who struggled and sacrificed their entire lives--whether American or Russian-born are placed in such a position is prosta steed y pazor (a terrible shame) and an indictment of an oft-callous society which lets its weakest members collapse in the dust while the rich get richer. Its the fault of decades of fealty by American society to a blind policy of social Darwinism, and hardly the fault of the Russian establishment, although to the extent that many of them have eagerly embraced Republicanism, they have done their small part to perpetuate it.

If B-K wants to win over this population, much of which is now against him, and ensure his reelection in two years, he will have to acheive some results, however modest, to show that he is working to allieviate the miserable conditions afflicting too many in the 46th Assembly District--especially the elderly--which means first and foremost, doing something to increase the stock of affordable housing in the district, but also, improving police protection, helping people to deal with immigration problems and making sure they receive the social benefits due to them, while succoring those who fall through the cracks, and literally face eviction and a life on the streets. That is exactly what B-K has promised to do in an interview with me the day before the election. If he can accomplish even a fraction of this, his problem with the Russian 'narod' will be greatly allieviated; otherwise he knows there is Ari Kagan waiting in the wings to try again to chase him from power two years hence.

As to Ari, he ran a superb campaign based on people-power that came within 150 votes in the primary of shocking the political establishment and defeating a candidate who was endorsed by the entire Brooklyn political establishment. Nevertheless, Kagan has shown some rough spots, especially with his seemingly childish behavior since the primary, refusing to acknowledge defeat for over a month and then refusing to endorse B-K, leaving ample grounds for suspicion that he was encouraging his followers by winks and nods to vote for B-K's Republican opponent, Patricia Laudano. Kagan denies adamantly doing any such thing, but Laudano's camp acknowledges paying for a flyer distrubted in buildings with heavy Russain population signed by a Kagan supporter named Gregory Piller urging people to vote for Laudano, because Laudano had promised to stay in office for only one term and after that Kagan "would have the backing of her supporters the next time around." Kagan adamantly denies making any deal with Laudano, but the suspicion lingers that he was inclined to try to prevent the election of the first Russian candidate in an effort to settle accounts with Brook-Krasny.

As it turned out, the Piller leaflet and several other, much dirtier ones that smeared B-K and many of his supporters in nasty personal terms, failed to have much political effect, as the vast majority of Kagan's supporters ended up voting for B-K over Laudano. In the end, they held their nose and voted for the Russian candidate on the ballot, even though he was not the one who won their hearts. But if Kagan wants to take the next step forward in what is potentially a promising political career, he will have to move away now from the politics of resentment and slash and burn and rebuild ties with the Russian and Democratic political establishments he so strongly excoriated over the past six months.

One way for Ari Kagan to start the process of healing would to denounce loudly and clearly on Russian radio, tv and in Vecherniye New York some of the anonymous leaflets, mostly written in Russian and widely distributed in the last days of the campaign praising him and excoriating Krasny and his allies in unacceptable personal terms. Specifically one of the leaflets savagely attacked Fira Stukelman, a Holocaust survivor, activist in survivor and veterans groups, and consumate political activist, a former close ally of Kagan's who angered many other members of the politically active Russian pensioners, when she broke with Kagan and campaigned actively and effectively for Brook-Krasny. The leaflet charges incredibly and unforgivably that Fira "dreams that zhidi (kikes) should be killed in concentration camps and regrets that the Nazis didnt do that."

When I asked Kagan about that leaflet and others just before the election, he said he has no idea who the authors of these things are, and that he hasn't condemned these and earlier defamatory leaflets because "it wouldnt do much good, because these people would go on doing it anyway." Yet he mused to me that "Yes, maybe this time I will say something against this. Maybe I will say something after the election." OK, nu, Ari, so get out there and denounce this now. However angry you may be at Fira Stukelman, she doesnt deserve to be attacked so savagely and shamefully. Fira is a strong and proud Jew, who has fought to keep memory of the Holocaust alive. The anonymous authors of these disgusting leaflets are your supporters; if you want a political future it is incumbent on you now to do the right thing and make clear you will have nothing to0 do with such poison.

Ari, a lot of ugly and unfair charges were thrown around during the campaign, including the one by Brook-Krasny that you were tied to the KGB, because you attended the Lvov Military and Political School as a young man. Certainly, you were sinned against as well as sinning. But the hate-mongering should stop now, and you can make an important contribution to that process be denouncing the evil charge against Fira Stukelman and appealing to your supporters to cease and desist from any more such ugly leaflets. Now is the time for reconciliation. You have made an important contribution this year as a defender of the weak and powerless in the community, but your future political viability depends on you making clear that ,as far as you are concerned, henceforth political discourse within the Russian and broader communities must be a debate over ideas, without recourse to personal defamation and destruction.