Ploy Story: The Art of Subterfuge
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In the movie Toy Story, the character Buzz Lightyear thinks he can fly. The art of subterfuge involves two tactics: 1) complicate what is very simple, or 2) simplify what is actually complicated. Anthony Plonczynski-Figueroa, manages to do both in defending his employer James Sheppard – candidate for Mayor of Rochester. “Behind the Curtain: How Lovely Warren and The Party of Trump Have Taken Over the City of Rochester” (Rochester Indymedia), Plonczynski's essay response to The Reinvention of Jim Sheppard and the Rise of the New Jim Crow contains so many errors and half-truths that it has taken some time to respond to.
The whiter the neighborhood, the more Sheppard signs
Plonczynski is the Vice Chair of the Sheppard for Mayor campaign, so we really don't know if these are his own ideas and words or he was paid to write his response in service to the campaign. Let's hope it is the later.
First, Plonczynski states that in 2013, “many in the community were reeling” from Lovely Warren's upset victory. He failed to admit the obvious, that few of those people feeling a loss after the election actually live in the city, and for the ones that did, they are from the whitest, richest, most elite areas of Rochester. This is plain to see from the ubiquitous Richards yard signage in the Park Ave, East Ave, and Browncroft mansion areas, the same areas that now contain most of the signs for Sheppard. The political signage syncs with the city's racial divide. The more Sheppard signs you see, the whiter that neighborhood's population.
Browncroft area mansion.
Good leadership = cleaning up Richards' mess
Plonczynski also contends that Lovely Warren got her 2013 campaign funding from dubious sources, namely Republicans and was involved in “public corruption” regarding the school modernization program. He states:
“What we have learned about this project however is that it is her actions regarding the replacement of board members and the steering of contracts to a company connected to the late Conservative Republican Assemblyman Bill Nojay (a Trump delegate) and Lobbyist Robert Scott Gaddy that are being investigated by the FBI.”
But in the very same article that Plonczynski references - Bill Nojay's Misdeeds Play Out In Court, it points out very clearly that Warren steered contracts to a NY construction company that was owned by Barbara Armand. The article also states that Warren said “Armand was the right person to play a leading role in the company.” What the D&C investigators conveniently failed to mention in their 20 page piece was that Barbara Armand is black and her company Armand Construction is one of the few, if any, black and woman-owned construction companies in New York State.
The article goes onto say that Armand resigned from the project because she did not trust Nojay, and when Armand left the project, Warren pulled her support from the deal Nojay had helped arrange. Warren demonstrates good leadership here, which would be the opposite of corruption.
Remember also that in contracting with Armand, Warren was trying to address the actual corruption that took place during Mayor Richards tenure, when his administration had the most seats on the labor board overseeing contracts regarding the school modernization program. It was on Richards' watch, during work Phase 1, 2012-14, when five locally based Rochester, Batavia, and Niagra Falls construction companies were indicted by NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and had to pay $825,000 in fines as punishment for skirting rules in the use of minority and women-owned businesses.
If we are to talk honestly and accurately about nepotism, attracting funds from white non-city elitists, corruption, (because these are essential ingredients that Plonczynski is in short-hand referring to as Republican and Trump-like novelties) Lovely's opponent Tom Richards was king.
King Richards and the neocolonials
Former Mayor of Rochester and then CEO of RG&E Tom Richards at NY Stock Exchange (Source: D&C, July 25, 2000)
Richards is the former CEO of RG&E, who earned millions from charging poorer customers more than rich customers for electricity, while investing nothing in renewable energy ("RG&E to offer renewable energy", D&C, June 2, 2002) and then as Mayor hired his former RG&E buddies who themselves had gained their riches from outsourcing local ownership of the company to the Spanish company Ibedrolla.
During his re-election campaign for mayor, Richards drew funding from the Browncroft, Park Ave, and white elite districts of the city and additional support from unions whose membership live outside the city (Rochester Teachers Association -RTA, Ginna workers -IBEW Local Union 97, Firefighters 1071, Construction, and the police's Locust Club).
(Source: Rochester Firefighters Local 1071 website)
These same vastly white unions are heavily financing Sheppard's campaign.
(Source: New York State Board of Elections )
Some of these same unions hedged their bets and gave money to the Friends of Lovely Warren campaign as well, but considerably less. For example the Sheet Metal Workers Local 46 contributed $1,250 to Warren compared to $7,500 for Sheppard. The Laborer's International Union contributed $1,250 to Warren and $8,000 to Sheppard.
It also should be recognized that the RTA invests directly in private prisons via the New York State Teachers Retirement System. As of June 2017, the Rochester teacher retirement fund was investing $6.4 million in CoreCivic, Inc. After a critical story by VICE that ran in 2013 – “Who's Getting Rich off the Prison-industrial Complex” – Corrections Corporation of America changed its name, in Orwellian fashion, to CoreCivic, Inc. The Rochester area teachers also invest $5.2 million in GEO Group, Inc. Geo Group, Inc. and CoreCivic, Inc. are the two biggest corporations that operate detention centers in the US.
To recap, when you are going up against Daddy Warbucks, (ex. Tom Richards) and the captains of the prison industry (cops and capitalists), a certain degree of Robinhood-like political thuggery by Warren could be justified. This is why black and brown people kind of laugh when the white press and critics make a big deal of the measly $40,000, that Lovely allegedly recieved from dubious sources. Over the course of the last century, white people have been stealing billions from blacks in Rochester via an “occupation”; they occupy every well-paying vocation in the city.
But is it illegal to take money from outside donors? Isn't that the question Plonczynski is really asking? Well maybe if the #unionssowhite legacy that Plonczynski reps hadn't robbed black city residents of jobs and social mobility for decades, there would be an economic-political base within the city to draw from. Instead of faulting his own candidate Mayor 1% Richards for using imperial dollars to outspend Warren 3 to 1, Plonczynski calls out Ms. Warren, David Gantt, Scott Gaddy for doing what white politicians do all the time – use clever, legal, strategies to infuse resources into Warren's campaign. Therefore the 8 pages of Plonczyski's complaints can be summed up as such: Black people get good at playing White man's game, white man gets upset and wants the rules changed.
Richards' (and now Sheppard's) ol' boy network
Richard A. Ash (Source: cpward.com)
By now you should know that Sheppard is just the puppet and voice talent of the Richards' re-re-election campaign from 2013. If we were to really investigate shady campaign funding, we could locate one of Sheppard's biggest contributors – Richard A. Ash of Piffard, NY (no that is not a misspelling – not Pittsford, but Piffard, NY.) For those wondering where Piffard, NY is, well it isn't in the city of Rochester for starters, and it is about 40 miles south of here. Ash has given the Sheppard campaign $9,500 this year. It should be noted that Ash gave money to Friends of Lovely Warren in 2015, but the amount was considerably less: $2,500. But for Plonczynski and the white press, getting money from allegedly suspect sources becomes controversy, only when Warren engages in that game.
Source: New York State Board of Elections
Richard A. Ash is the longtime president of C.P. Ward, Inc. - a locally based utility construction company. Richard A. Ash was indicted by a federal grand jury for bid rigging on projects for RG&E between 1987 to at least 1993. Not coincidently, this was the same era in which former Mayor Richards served as senior vice president for corporate services, senior vice president for finance and as president and chief operating officer for RG&E.
Richard A. Ash's company C.P. Ward pled guilty to the antitrust violations and agreed to pay $270,000 in fines to RG&E. And while the Presidents of other indicted companies faced additional individual fines, probation and home confinement, C.P. Ward issued a statement apologizing for its conduct but said it was an unnamed former employee, not Ash, that had participated in the bid-rigging. So Mr. Ash is President of a relatively small construction company, for which bid-rigging goes on for a half a decade, and he knows nothing about it. The even more criminal outcome of the settlement was that, because RG&E said there was no evidence the contractors had overcharged for the work, all of the firms would continue to do business with RG&E, so long as they adopted new compliance measures. (Source: “Firm guilty of rigging bids,” D&C, Jan. 20, 1999.)
It seems Ash and Richards became good buddies either during or following the federal indictment, so much that Ash would contribute $7,500 to Richards election campaign in 2011 and 2013.
(Source: NY State Board of Elections)
That same year, Ash would spend lavishly on Maggie Brooks' re-election campaign.
This is also the same Richard A. Ash and the same company C.P. Ward Inc. that in 1983 colluded with Black Cloud, a “pass-through” company Ash helped create, to steal state-contracted construction jobs from minority-owned firms. New York State wanted 8 percent of the work to be contracted out to minority-owned firms. Eight percent of the job was $62,979, according to “Black Cloud loses minority status,” D&C, Feb. 4, 1986. The investigation concluded that much of the work Black Cloud was contracted to do was actually done by C.P. Ward. Black Cloud could produce records showing that the minority-owned company workers were paid only $12,474 for the job.
Stealing construction jobs from minorities is a multiple decade-long operation for Tom Richards and his good ol' boys. One of those good ol' boys is Ken Warner. An audit conducted by the the Rochester Joint Schools Construction board found that $500,000 was spent to train 90 minorities as apprentices through the five years of Phase 1 construction, but just five ended up getting hired for the project. Overseeing portions of the training was Ken Warner, Executive Director of UNICON – a partnership of unions and contractors.
In the year 2016, Lovely Warren engineered Richards' dismissal from the Rochester Joint Schools Construction Board, which supervises the ongoing $1.3 billion school modernization project. This demonstrates again, what most people with any sense of justice would refer to as good leadership – the opposite of corruption.
#unionssowhite
It is common knowledge that the white male dominated construction labor force lives outside of the city. These white men, and their suburban membered unions are backing Jim Sheppard for Mayor, as evident of the sea of elder white men in attendance at the Workers United building for Sheppard's campaign kickoff and also their endorsements. Is this a Trump rally or a Sheppard rally?
Supporters at James Sheppard's Mayoral Campaign Kickoff at Workers United building, East Ave.
Anyone who identifies specific flaws with these unions, namely their lack of diversity, Plonczynski labels anti-union. It's pretty obvious that you can't get gung-ho about unions, if you don't have a job in the first place. You can't be Workers United unless you have work. The unions have a history of excluding minorities and women. Locally and especially in construction work, they have not made a significant departure from the status-quo.
In the same vein, anyone who criticizes specific events and examples of police malfeasance is labeled anti-cop by Plonczynski. This is reminiscent of the response tactic of ultraconservatives; if you criticize Israel, somehow you are an anti-semite, if you criticize America, that makes you un-patriotic.
The irony continues with Plonczynski calling out Warren's education agenda as “anti-public”. I don't think she ever advocated for an “elected” leader to remain in power for over four decades (RTA President Adam Urbanski), for 85% of the Rochester teaching staff to be be white and live outside the City of Rochester and, or as cited earlier, for the teachers investing millions of dollars in private prisons. Those are all current practices of the RTA and its “Public Agenda”.
Even when Plonczynski manages to locate leaders of a minority labor group that “support” Jim Sheppard, it is the RTS Bus Drivers Union, that just so happens to be run by two white men: Jacques Chapman - President and Dominick Zarcona -Vice President, of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 282.
RTS Bus Drivers Union President and V.P. (Source: WROC 8)
How is it that this “majority minority” union, as Plonczynski puts it, doesn't have a minority President or VP? Maybe this helps explain why these white men are backing the white establishment candidate. This is the apartheid-like representative model that Plonczyski takes pride in.
RTS Union Leaders (Source: ATU Local 282 Facebook)
This past month -August 2017, a truly minority-led union, SEIU1199, endorsed Lovely Warren. This month – September 2017, the Western New York Chapter of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives (NOBLE) endorsed Mayor Lovely Warren as the best person to continue leading the City of Rochester. These endorsements represent the more authentic voice of black unionized workers, than any example Plonczynski came up with.
Guess which union leadership team below endorsed Warren and which endorsed Sheppard?
(Top: SEIU1199 leadership, Bottom: Building and Trades leadership)
The fake left credentials of the Working Families Party
With regard to the racial and class identity of the authors of the essay response. Ken Warner and Plonczynski have benefited greatly from being perceived as white, regardless of how they self-identify. Only recently has Plonczynski started using his hyphenated Figuorora in his surname, perhaps to add more “ethnicity” to his facade of advocating for brown people. For actual brown and black people, racial identity is not something that can easily be turned on or off to benefit the situation. These flip-floppers may have in the past broke ranks from the white power elite, but they sure are working directly for them now.
When it comes to names, what does the Working Families Party even mean? Are you for the working class, or just for working families regardless of economic bracket? The obfuscation of their name is indicative of their very safe political platform; they want to please everyone, and end up hawking confusion. This is the party of subterfuge. That same evil Republican, Plonczynski shows Warren pictured with at the St. Patrick's day parade, is Joe Robach, who the Working Families Party endorsed in 2006. To steal a line from Plonczynski then: “don't misrepresent the facts either. Facts that you can find in a simple google search that takes three minutes."
The WFP locally has cut so many deals with so many people, Republicans, Democrats, Conservatives, Independents, that no one really knows what they stand for anymore, if we ever did in the first place. They maintain a mythology of pushing Democrats leftward while almost never running their own candidates. By re-packaging politicians from the two capitalist parties, they essentially try to convince progressives that fast-food is fine dining. But a Big Mac does not miraculously become gourmet when you take it from the drive thru to your home, put it on a nice plate and light some candles. Superficial ingredients will always be that.
Master Puppeteers
Ken Warner and his protege Plonczynski have become Rochester's professional political puppeteers. Here is how they complicate what is very simple. It is reminiscent of the scene from Toy Story where Buzz Lightyear believes he can fly and jumps off a dresser. Magically he pinballs off one object or another giving the appearance of flight to the low-information toy character on-lookers (read Park Ave and Browncroft white elitist voters of the city). But the data points in Plonczynski's narrative don't hold up to scrutiny, just like Buzz Lightyear's aeronautical abilities.
Plonczynski lobs all sorts of corruption charges at the current mayor, and none of them stick, save for in the D&C columns of writer Dave Andreatta and his WXXI radio echo chamber Evan Dawson. In the months leading up to the election, Andreatta published numerous columns critical of Warren, and zero copy critical of her opponents. Dawson used his show as an interrogation of Warren rather than an interview. Sheppard pleads for and promises the press an investigation is coming, but it never arrives. A day away from the primary election and we have to wonder, was all the “controversy” over “paypal-gate” and “debate-gate” a political ploy orchestrated by Rochester's master puppeteers?
It is a cynical state of Rochester politics when “Democrats” have to swift-boat and email-gate their opponents because their own record is a farce. This is why Sheppard had fundraisers where his supporters could contribute $99 and remain anonymous with campaign financing law. These are the loyal “Democrat” backers of Sheppard, too ashamed to put their name in support of him. And in the movie, Buzz Lightyear could not really fly. It turns out that his “flight” was actually just one tremendously acrobatic fall. And so it goes with the puppet candidate James “I'm your favorite deputy” Sheppard. His spine has always been a pull string for the powerful white colonizers of Rochester.
*Some edits were made to this essay from its original post.
