Actually, from my understanding, the choice of the Harlem neighborhood was made because the kids up there are more likely to be poor, and thus would benefit more from a free toy than some kid living on Park Avenue (the other possible location they scouted).

But why aren't there any members of the Libertarian Party in Harlem? Hmm...

Your analogy would work if the black protestor was protesting the arrest of a person suspected of killing a white Republican politician -- in other words, if the action was a direct insult to the people in the neighborhood.

I'm sorry to see your lack of sympathy for the people in Harlem who have seen the ravages of gun warfare in their neighborhoods, and who do not want to see guns in the hands of their children. In light of the Diallo shooting, how could they want an African American child to have a toy gun in his possession? The most well-meaning cop in the world might have a hard time knowing what to do when he's looking for a teenage suspect, carrying a gun, and he sees a young person with what looks like a gun.

Springsteen put it well:
Lena gets her son ready for school
She says "on these streets, Charles
You've got to understand the rules
If an officer stops you
Promise you'll always be polite,
that you'll never ever run away
Promise Mama you'll keep your hands in sight"

Is it a gun, is it a knife
Is it a wallet, this is your life
What do NYC cops think of the ban? I suspect that they're glad to have one less thing to worry about when they are looking for a violent criminal.
Is it a toy gun, is it a fake knife,
Is it a wallet, this is your life...

Still waiting for the Libertarian campaign to show Harlem kids the alternatives to gang life.

Several good Boondocks comics on the subject of being a "thug" vs. an NRA member/ Republican.

PG: For crap's sake, they're not handing out *real* guns to these kids. They're toys! I bet a whole lot of people across the country have played with toy guns that didn't grow up to be criminals. I didn't. I also had a toy vacuum when I was a kid, and I didn't grow up to be a housewife. They're TOYS, get it?

The only instances in Harlem there have been of people being hurt while using toy guns is when they tried to pass them off as real guns to commit crimes.

Besides, why should you assume that simply because they're black kids that they're going to grow up to emulate criminals? They're more likely to end up playing cops or detectives or army guys -- hardly negative rolemodels.

Leave it to a non-racist to assume that black kids are going to rush out with their toy guns and pretend to be armed robbers.

As a corner case: would it be no big deal to hand out toy guns to kids in a war zone?

The problem is not that kids will pretend to be robbers. It's that police officers will see a kid playing with a toy gun, think it's real and shoot. About 10 years ago, San Jose area cops warned parents against realistic looking squirt guns and told them to buy models in purple, orange or other non-realistic colors. It wasn't a race issue. They didn't want to shoot a kid by mistake.

Joanne: Again, the only incidents of police officers shooting people with toy guns were when people intentionally tried to pass off the toy guns as real guns. They were all adults. Since the early 90s, toy guns have those bright orange tips on them if they look anything even remotely like a real gun. Been to a Toys R Us lately? Or KayBee? Toy stores don't sell fake guns that look real anymore, and they haven't in a long long time.

PG:
Guns don't commit "gun warfare". That's the problem with the magical thinking of blaming inanimate objects for the actions of human beings. Drugs are another example of this idiocy.

Do you think kids in a war zone don't play soldier?

While I find the actions of the New York City Council deplorable (parents should have the right to decide which toys there children can and cannot play with) it is telling that the Liberterian Party decided to pass out toy guns to "underpriviledged" children in predominantly minority districts. Granted Harlem has more children who fall below the poverty line than Park Avenue, but there are multiple non-minority communities that would be equally as qualified as Harlem. If the Libertarian Party had truly had the interest of all underprivileged children at heart they would have attempted to distribute toy guns to a wide cross section, not merely the group most likely to violently react to this confrontational and political gesture (and any community with a history of massive gun violence among its youth is a group that would react negatively to the idea of distributing free toy guns). The Libertarians knew exactly what they were doing; they were attempting to push a sensitive community's buttons in order to receive free media coverage. The calculated nature of the toy gun giveaway negate any claims that the Libertarians were merely trying to help underprivileged children. Make a political point and help their cause, yes, help underprivileged children, please.

Side note: I do think the Libertarians were helping everyone, including underprivileged children, by furthering discussion and rightly criticizing the misguided efforts of the NYC council. Advancing civil liberties helps everyone.

Dakota: Quite a lot of groups do things to make a political point. Ever heard of the Democratic party?

This discussion assumes there is something inherently bad with toy guns. There isn't. Why aren't people saying what a good thing this is, that the Libertarian party is giving toys to underprivileged minority children? Are they only allowed to give toys to white kids? Why assume there are no black Libertarians (as PG did)?

If they were handing out teddy bears to kids in Harlem, would people be bitching about it? It's a frigging TOY.

Why all the uproar over toy guns? My understanding is that in poor neighborhoods kids are far more likely to get killed over a pair of Air Jordans, a Raiders jacket or some other status thing than were ever harmed by a toy gun.

Why don't the neighborhood politicians outlaw those?

As for showing Harlem kids the alternatives to gang life, they have that. It's called schooling, right now there enough funding so that every "child of color" can attend some kind of college if they attain good enough grades.

The biggest obstacle there is not toy guns but "acting white". I don't see any of these "concerned" politicians trying to do anything about that.

Do you think kids in a war zone don't play soldier?

They do, but that wasn't the question I asked, but let me rephrase to be a bit clearer: would it be ok to give those kids toy guns that look like the real thing?

I grew up about 9 blocks from our current president in the same era. Our most popular game was simply called "guns," because we didn't want to exclude anyone. Toys ranged from frontier flintlocks (remember, this was during the Davy Crockett craze) to machine guns. Whatever you had, you used.

Despite some overly dramatic "deaths," nobody ever got hurt. Cops ignored us.

But then, 12-year-olds didn't shoot people in that era. Nor were they exposed to "music" urging them to do so.

Society has changed, and not for the better.

John Clifton, Libertarian candidate for Senator from New York (lost to Hillary!) in 2000 is black.

ISN'T THAT INTERESTING???

The proposed law bans toy guns that look like real guns. A kid in Harlem playing with a toy gun could easily be shot, if not by a nervous police officer then by a nervous drug dealer. (This might happen if he pretended that the toy gun was a real gun, but it might happen anyway.) In any case, while the guns remain legal the decision about whether kids in Harlem should or should not carry them ought to be made by their parents, not by the Libertarian Party. I certainly see an act of arrogant racism here, but it isn't (just this once) by Jesse Jackson.

http://www.irol.com/avc/Fact_Sheet_About_Toy_Guns.html

Notably, none of the shot/dead people were brandishing teddy bears. Veronica: google. It's a search engine.

Perhaps the parents of the children up in Harlem would share your zest for bouleversing the stuffy old legislators if it weren't their kids on the line.

There is racism here, but it's not coming from the angry community but from the Libertarians who go into a neighborhood to exploit black children to make a political point....even knowing that black children have been shot by police for carrying a realistic toy gun. Instead of whining about the community's anger at their presumption and arrogance, they should just say a quick mea culpa and hope it's forgotten.

Moreover, for Libertarians to interject themselves into a family's decision about whether or not a child has a play gun by handing out guns to children without parental consent is the purest form of hypocrisy....and it's their own racism that prevents them from seeing that they are infringing on the black parent's rights. Add to that the condescension of their excuse-making of wanting to give to poor kids...and there is no step along the path of this sorry story where they haven't demonstrated their bigotry.

Looking at the law, it appears they're removing all the "must be transparent/brightly colored qualifiers," so it's just "no toy gun that could be reasonable mistaken can be sold." Judging by the words of the council members, however, that'll be an effective ban on all toy guns.

I'd say it's stupid.....except for this:

Inspector Steven Silks of the Police Department told the Council that since 1998 there had been 12 cases in which officers had fired at someone holding a toy gun that had been mistaken for a real weapon. Inspector Silks said it was unclear how many of the instances involved fatal shootings.

Kind of hard to argue with that. Society is explicitly making a trade off between free speech and accidental deaths here; it makes perfect sense that the crime rate in a community should determine how many accidental deaths we're talking about.

I'm the Chair of the Manhattan LP.

We had ZERO interest in handing out toy guns to kids in Harlem or anywhere else.

We WERE conducting street theater intended to spark debate about a patently stupid law banning inanimate objects, about parents, not government, deciding which toys their kids may play with, about hysteria created by shameless politicians, and about entrenched parties' policies (like drug prohibition) being the VERY CAUSE of a community rife with REAL violence.

"Inspector Steven Silks of the Police Department told the Council that since 1998 there had been 12 cases in which officers had fired at someone holding a toy gun that had been mistaken for a real weapon. Inspector Silks said it was unclear how many of the instances involved fatal shootings."

ALL used in the commission of a crime.

Gary

If the situation were exactly reversed, would commentators think the same things about each group? Maybe someone could come up with an exactly reversed situation, and post it here: http://atrios.blogspot.com/2003_02_09_atrios_archive.html#90303032

Color me crazy, but I think the odds of the members of the black democratic caucus handing out free guns to Park Avenue kids (the best i can think of as an exact reversal) are pretty slim.

FDL, you are not crazy. 'Wacko is. If he said something sensible it would be a red letter day.

Dr. Manhattan appears to be the racist in this instance. Mr. Jackson's remark about handing out the toys "in your neighborhood" means 'if you wouldn't endanger children in your own community, why are you endangering ours?' It is bigoted of Dr. Manhattan to read a racist 'stay in your neighborhood' message into the dialogue. No one is being told they can't visit or live in East Harlem. Besides, he has the person likely to say that on the wrong side of the equation. Libertarians have a long and sordid history of supporting racism, including segregation. And, please spare me the 'it is the blacks and Hispanics who are racists' crappola, already.

Well, as long as you're in agreement that you were playing a cheap game for publicity rather than trying to do anything for the children, it should be easy to convince the parents in East Harlem that you don't give a shit about white kids with influential parents either.

I'll be watching for the news of your arrest for handing out guns to the kids outside the 92d St Y.

Try not to get shot.

"Color me crazy, but I think the odds of the members of the black democratic caucus handing out free guns to Park Avenue kids (the best i can think of as an exact reversal) are pretty slim."

FDL, if I tell you Moe is sitting, Larry is standing, and Curly is sitting, is the situation where Moe is standing, Larry is standing, and Curly is standing an exact reversal of that?

No, because Larry's state is unchanged.

So, to get an exact reversal, you'll need to find something similar to the toy guns that the hypothetical Vendors of Color could pass out.

As for MacDiva, http://www.indyweek.com/durham/2000-08-23/backtalk.html

"Libertarians regard racism as an individual pathology instead of institutionalized white supremacy. They deny the existence of national oppression. In particular, they deny the historical symbiosis of capitalism and racism. Many of our steadier allies don't seem to grasp that, either. That's the step we haven't taken in looking at ruthless symptoms like police brutality and a racist criminal justice system. These symptoms are traceable to a systemic problem. Capitalism and racism are historically bound together, like a Gordian knot. There is no possibility of erasing the latter without disposing of the former... Fidel understands. Free the Cuban Five!"

(Sorry, I added the last two sentences.)

Julia told Gary Snyder where to go so well, I just gotta say 'Amen.'

Now if he and his sock puppet would desist from false statements, such as only criminals have been shot at by police while in possession of toy guns, we might be able to have a rational discussion. (With the exception of 'Wacko, of course.)

One question left open is why Snyder believes a school in East Harlem is a playhouse. I await his, likely ludicrous, response.

Meanwhile, I am going to raise the matter of Libertarianism and racism with a blogger or two of that ilk who is capable of behaving like a reasonable man.

A warm welcome to all of Atrios' dittoheads. I hope you'll continue to visit.
Gary, do you have sources for your claim that the 12 shootings all occurred in the commission of crimes?
Mac, do you have sources for your claim that Gary's statement to that effect is false?
I stand by my belief that if a black protestor came into a primarily white neighborhood and gave out something controversial (you can fill in that blank) and a white local politican told that protestor to "give it out in your neighborhood," that white politican would be considered to have made a racist remark.
It is certainly not always the case that a bigoted remark made by a member of one ethinc group would necessarily be so bigoted if made by another. But I think that such a statement should be presumed bigoted, absent extenuating circumstances.
I don't see such extenuating circumstances here.

An amusing reverse argument:

What if a bunch of black politicans went to the suburbs and started handing out pretend crack pipes?

actually, I'm one of Mark's dittoheads, but thanks.

I can't decide if you're being disingenuous or if you really don't get that in choosing to play out "street theater" by using these particular children as props - children whose parents would be guaranteed to protest and put the libertarians in the news, but who don't have enough influence to have the "actors" hauled off by the police the way parents in downtown Manhattan would have - the Libertarians made a shrewd, but utterly cynical, decision.

Playing that decision off as "giving out toys" or equivalent to teddybears or suggesting that the parents are racists for pointing out that the "actors" are going out of their own back yards, or (particularly offensive) suggesting that having a black candidate should get the Libertarian party off the hook for taking advantage of the political powerlessness of the parents in East Harlem doesn't give them nearly enough credit for realpolitik (and you will note that the gentleman who planned this isn't nearly as ready to sugarcoat this as his defenders).

I'm interested - the people who are disagreeing with you are articulating very specific stances here which certainly didn't appear on Atrios - as a matter of fact, Atrios' story linked to Mark.

Where do you get "dittoheads" from?

Julia:
1) Sorry for assuming you came via Atrios. The vast majority of the visitors referred by Prof. Kleiman arrived after Atrios linked to his post, so I assumed that most such visitors were secondhand Atrios referrals. (Unfortunately, Prof. Kleiman's previous links to my site have not resulted in as many visitors, even though I think his site is far superior to Atrios.' A clear market failure of the blogosphere! Government action is called for...)
2) Paragraphs 2 & 3...who are you talking to? I didn't say most of those things. But since I'm feeling generous:
a) From the reports, it doesn't seem like the Libertarians were counting on the political powerlessness of the local community. Presumably, the city councilmen in question, once engaged, should've had enough clout to have the Libertarians hauled off by the police.
b) Yes, I do think the Libertarians' stunt was pretty equivalent to "giving out toys." While you may disagree, that disagreement goes to the core of the policy question, and can't be assumed away.
c) I didn't call the parents racist; they were 100% within their rights to discourage or forbid their kids from taking advantage of the opportunity. Just as they would be if the event in question was a toy drive. The possible racists were the city councilmen in question.
d) I will refer your point re: the black Libertarian candidate to the commenter who made it.

3) Apparently Rush Limbaugh refers to his loyal listeners as "dittoheads." Based on what I've seen on Atrios' comment boards, that strikes me as an appropriate analogy. (And see #1 regarding my assumption re: the source of Kleiman referrals.)

b) Yes, I do think the Libertarians' stunt was pretty equivalent to "giving out toys." While you may disagree, that disagreement goes to the core of the policy question, and can't be assumed away.

Imagine that a bunch of black politicans went to the suburbs to hand toy "water pipes", that is, bongs. Real bongs can be both used for fun and abused, the same as any other drug; real guns can also be used for fun, used for self-defense, and abused (crime).

Do you think white families in the suburbs would react any differently? Do you think white families would be called racist for not wanting black politicans handing out toy bongs in their neighborhood?

The only difference I see is that the stakes are lower.

I wonder whether Dr. Manhattan is well. Hardly anything he says makes sense to a reasonable person. First, he confuses a link to Mark's blog on Atrios' blog with meaning Atrios is responsible for the content of the blog item and responses to it here. Then, he adds insult to injury, by implying Eschaton participants are dittoheads. Hardly. Dittoheads echo the thoughts of a 'great leader.' Participants at Atrios' site have minds of their own. Furthermore, most Eschaton participants also visit several other blogs. And, obviously, dittoheads are usually conservatives. Suffice it to say that Atrios, who is looking at a million visitors in less than a year, could teach DM a thing or two.

If the Libertarians were interested in handing out toys, they would have included some Tonka trucks and Barbie dolls. Since the only thing they tried to hand out was facsimiles of handguns, their intent must have been something else. Most people, including the guilty parties, realize that, but not DM.

As for the city councilmen being racist, that is ludicrous. If black and Hispanic interlopers had handed out the make-believe handguns, I am sure their reaction would have been just the same. The acts of the Libertarians got them busted, not their race. In contrast, just the sight of a brown or black face is enough of a catalyst to send many a conservative into racist overdrive. Again, DM doesn't ge it.

Perhaps I should be saying DIM instead of DM.

Mac Diva,

I guess I'm Gary Snyder's "sock puppet", since I conceived and planned "Guns For Tots". Since you accuse Gary and I of stating falsehoods that only criminals get shot with toy guns, I assume you are prepared to back up your slanderous accusation with evidence. Please do so, and provide the URLs. We did the research, and the last case of a genuine tragedy of police shooting an innocent child at play in NYC, that we could find, was in 1994. I assume you can do better.

Not that it matters, but you may find interesting the following list of prominent black Americans who have _endorsed_ Guns For Tots, specifically because it was done in Harlem:
* Dr. Walter Williams, noted economist, columnist and occasional talk show host
* Ken Hamblin ("The Black Avenger"), nationally syndicated talk radio host on the ABC Radio Network
* John Clifton, LPNY candidate for U.S. Senate in 2000

Jim Lesczynski
Founder, Guns For Tots

One other thing...
Why do you believe Gary thinks a school in East Harlem is a "playhouse"? I can't speak for Gary, but it seems to me that like any NYC public school, the one we chose in East Harlem is closer to a rat-infested sewer than a playhouse, and the nicest thing anyone could do for those kids is to distract them from the government propaganda that passes for education there.

Jim Loser, Gary said he was doing theatre. Hopefully, even you are bright enough to figure out the 'playhouse' reference from here on.

Once you wrap your little brain around that, I recommend you do a more thorough search of children and police shootings. You might also avoid cheating. For example, don't limit the search to NYC and refer to only previously convicted persons as criminals.

You can only come up with three African-Americans who you allege support your stupid stunt? And, they are marginal persons with no credibility. Speaks for itself, eh?

Sheesh. Not only are you boys juvenile, you're dumb.

Why Libertarians took "Guns for Tots" to Harlem

Over the past couple weeks, I’ve been asked quite often why the Manhattan Libertarian Party chose PS 72 in Harlem February 6th as the setting for our toy gun giveaway, called -- with tongue planted firmly in cheek -- “Guns for Tots”, in protest of proposed City Hall legislation which would ban toy guns, including brightly colored water pistols, in NYC.

Oh, at the same time, many of these same questioners were also thankful that Libertarians are pro-choice on everything, including parents being free from government interference to choose their children’s toys. They recognize the dangers of an encroaching nanny-state.

“But why East Harlem?”

They also expressed gratitude for our revealing just how manipulative our City Council is in portraying one horrible, fluke tragedy as some kind of out-of-control epidemic. The truth is that since that day in 1994 when, in a dark stairwell, a deaf child who couldn’t hear a cop’s warning to drop his toy was fatally shot, there has not been in NYC one accidental shooting of an innocent child playing with a toy gun. All other innocent/accidental” shootings involved someone using a toy gun in the commission of a crime. But our exploitative City Council conveniently omits such facts.

“Incredible. But why East Harlem?”

We’ve received kudos for asking important questions such as, “Do we really want to divert our limited police and criminal justice resources from real crime to respond to sightings of kids with water pistols?” To Councilman James Sanders, Jr. of Queens who, at a City Hall hearing (where the Manhattan Libertarians testified minutes before the giveaway) asked shamelessly, “Wouldn’t it be horrible if one of those very guns they handed out to a youth ended up with that youth being killed?”, we fire back, “How would you feel if a woman was raped in your district while cops were out apprehending an eight-year-old with a day-glo squirt gun?”

“Hmmm. But why East Harlem?”

We’ve pointed out, to nodding heads, that such frivolous legislation won’t prevent one criminal act, simply because there are countless ways for thugs to replicate a real gun. Most folks know, to the utter frustration of the control-freaks in City Hall, that blaming and banning inanimate objects is silly, unnecessary, intrusive and, ultimately, destructive.

“Of course. BUT WHY EAST HARLEM?”

Well, why not East Harlem?

Is there a more appropriate setting at which to expose the City Council’s pathetic toy gun ban than a community supposedly suffering from this mythical “accidental shooting” epidemic? What better place than a minority community plagued by real violence to ridicule feeble legislation that would not only fail to address the problem, but would actually exacerbate it?

East Harlem was the perfect place for the rally. The last thing the community -- and cops -- need is one more excuse to arrest or hassle a minority kid who isn’t hurting anybody.

“Guns for Tots” was not a provocation, but rather a reaction in the face of a patently stupid law. It is a law criminalizing “wrong” or politically-incorrect toys that is provocation.

"Guns for Tots" was political street theater. The Manhattan Libertarian Party has no actual desire to distribute toy guns in East Harlem or anywhere else. That should be up to individual parents. Libertarians would never force a toy gun on any child/parent, unlike a City Council that wants to FORCE its ban on ALL parents.

The Manhattan Libertarian Party has been branded “racist” by members of a City Council -- Sanders, Charles Barron, Robert Jackson, Phil Reed among them -- that has failed its own minority communities. The dark skin pigmentation of these Councilmen doesn’t earn them a pass, as the residents of their districts aren’t ignorant to their cynical, race-baiting tactical efforts to conceal their violence-causing policies that hit minority communities hardest.

Ridiculous toy-banning legislation reveals a City Council that has no genuine solutions to offer communities rife with violence. Instead it continues to enact policy that is the very cause of much inner-city violence.

For example, it wages an immoral war on peaceful people called the “War on Drugs”, which only serves to create a violent, underground market just like alcohol prohibition did decades ago, turning communities of color into war zones while slapping felony records on a sizable percentage of minority youth. The Libertarian Party, however, is the only one on the political landscape calling for a complete and immediate end to the WOD.

When Sanders, Barron, Jackson, Reed and the like finally throw their hands up in the air and ask if the Manhattan Libertarians believe in any laws, we’ll say of course. We believe in those laws that say don’t hurt anyone else. After that, anything that’s peaceful and honest is fair game.

And there’s nothing at all “racist” about it.

Gary Snyder is chairman of the Manhattan Libertarian Party.
www.manhattanlp.org