March, 2010

The Villager/Activist/comedian is aiming to ‘chuck’ Schumer in election

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 http://www.thevillager.com/villager_360/activistscomedian.html

Volume 79, Number 42 | March 24 – 30, 2010
West and East Village, Chelsea, Soho, Noho, Little Italy, Chinatown and Lower East Side, Since 1933

Villager photo by Lincoln Anderson

Randy Credico and “Professor” Irwin Corey, 95, “The World’s Foremost Authority,” after a Credico Senate campaign fundraiser last weekend.

Activist/comedian is aiming to ‘chuck’ Schumer in election

By Lincoln Anderson

Randy Credico, a comedian turned drug activist, wants to give Senator Chuck Schumer a primary election challenge — something Schumer notably didn’t face in his 2004 re-election.

Credico, in his “mid-50s,” well, “early-mid-50s,” as he hedged, made his name in Las Vegas with his political impersonations in the 1980s, and appeared on the “Tonight Show” in 1984.

“I imitated Johnny Carson — and was blackballed for calling Jeane Kirkpatrick a Nazi,” he recalled of his first and last gig on the show.

A California native, he moved to New York in 1981. Starting about a dozen years ago, he transformed himself into an activist fighting for reform of the punitive Rockefeller Drug Laws. He had earlier met radical attorney William Kunstler when he was seeking legal help for his then-girlfriend, actress and singer Joey Heatherton.

Becoming friends with Kunstler, Credico went on to head the William Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice after the civil rights lawyer’s death. For the past 20 years, he has lived off and on at Kunstler’s Gay St. building — where the Kunstler Fund is located. He recently relocated to Chelsea, though, where he both lives and has his campaign office in a building owned by Richard Corey, son of legendary comic “Professor” Irwin Corey.

Not giving up his shtick, Credico for the past five years has been a once-a-week regular on New York Post political reporter Fred Dicker’s radio show as its “official comedian.” And he recently appeared in the state Senate dressed up as Diogenes, holding a lamp aloft, “looking for an honest man.”

“They finally kicked me out of there — they used some state law on masks,” Credico recounted of his Diogenes routine, during a recent interview with The Villager.

Humor infuses his campaign — he toted a sign with the catchy slogan, “Let’s ‘Chuck’ Schumer.” During one point in the interview, Credico did a montage of some of his impressions, effortlessly and hilariously shifting between Jimmy Stewart, Ronald Reagan, Ted Kennedy and Jesse Jackson. He’s been doing impressions since he was 16.

But Credico is serious in his criticism of the second-term New York senator, whom he calls a “blue dog Democrat.”

Credico said he opposes the wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq, whereas Schumer supports them. He accused the incumbent of not being supportive of gay marriage early enough. But, above all, he said Schumer has been too friendly to the banking industry.

“I call him Dr. Bankenstein — he bailed out the banks,” Credico said. “He’s owned by Big Pharma and Wall St. guys. Why wasn’t he there for St. Vincent’s? Why didn’t he come up with an emergency package? … You know who’s too big to fail? — St. Vincent’s Hospital, not Goldman Sachs.”

Credico also accused Schumer of not speaking out on “racial profiling” and stop-and-frisks of blacks and Latinos by New York City police, and said, if elected, he would introduce an anti-racial-profiling bill.

Drug legalization advocate
He supports legalizing marijuana.

“It’s the number one cash crop in the country — but they don’t tax it,” he noted. “I don’t consider it a drug,” he added. “God put it on the planet.”

A campaign slogan of Credico’s is: “Who would you rather smoke a joint with — me or Chuck Schumer?”

In fact, he thinks all drugs should be legal.

Credico supports amnesty for illegal immigrants.

“ICE should be abolished,” he said of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

On at least one issue, though, guns, Schumer has the more liberal position:

“I’m against gun control, he’s for it,” Credico stated, “because I don’t like tinkering with the Constitution. The Second Amendment is there. … Plaxico Burress shouldn’t be in jail — he hurt himself,” he added of the former Giants player who accidentally shot himself in a New York disco.

Asked if he was a Libertarian, Credico said, in fact, he has been invited to speak at the New York Libertarian Party’s upcoming convention.

“I’m a Libertarian,” he stated. “They have been flirting a lot with me. I’m considered a lefty Libertarian.”

Asked why he isn’t running against Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who is considered more vulnerable than Schumer, Credico said it’s because his friend Jonathan Tasini is challenging her — and also, Credico quipped, because if he ran against Gillibrand and beat her, then he’d “have to be in the Senate for six years with Chuck Schumer.”

Credico said he’s eager to debate Schumer, but suspects the senator will duck his offer. So he’s working on his Chuck Schumer impersonation — and, if necessary, will debate himself.

Ballot hurdle
Credico says he has raised $20,000 in campaign funds, which obviously pales compared to the millions in Schumer’s war chest. However, Credico’s more immediate challenge is getting his name on the Democratic primary ballot in September. He needs to collect 15,000 petition signatures statewide. But he’s confident he’ll do it.

At times, he self-deprecatingly says he has no chance to win. Rather, he says, he’s running because he needs Schumer’s help to fill in the gaps in the autobiography he’s writing: Credico said that because of his “hard time with drugs and alcohol,” there are “blackouts” about which he has no memory, and that because he knows Schumer will dredge up his substance abuse during the campaign, he’ll finally find out what happened during those times.

“Go to bed with Mary, wake up with Mark…,” he joked.

Credico said drugs are just a fact of life in the club scene where stand-up comedians perform.

“I did drugs — cocaine, of course,” he said. “It was in the clubs.” He said he’s since kicked cocaine.

Doing a quick montage of impressions of various comedians when they were on drugs, Credico said, “Rodney [Dangerfield] did everything, trust me. Redd Foxx used to have a little vial.” Jackie Mason is about the only one who didn’t do drugs, he said.

As for who has endorsed him so far, Credico says Larry David and Roseanne Barr are backing him.

“I suspect all comics will be supporting me,” he said.

He also claims the support of Malachy McCourt, former Green Party candidate for governor.

Credico said he was also hoping for state Senator Tom Duane’s endorsement.

“[State Senator] Eric Adams, Tom Duane — they’re all considering it,” he said. “They’re fearful of Chuck Schumer — he’s got $20 million, I don’t know why.”

Asked if Duane would be backing Credico against Schumer, spokesperson Eric Sumberg said, “Senator Duane has always thought highly of Randy Credico’s comedic talent and advocacy around the Rockefeller Drug Laws.”

Radio favorite
Dicker said of Credico, “He’s got the comedian’s dark side of loving the limelight. But he’s a genuine talent — my audience loves him. I bill him as an activist/comedian.”

Although noting there’s an anti-incumbent sentiment this year, Dicker said because there’s no public financing for state elections, Schumer wouldn’t be required to debate Credico. Dicker said getting on the Democratic ballot would be Credico’s biggest challenge.

Tasini said of Credico’s Senate bid: “The record of the senior senator of New York needs to be challenged, particularly his central role in deregulating the financial services industry, which led directly to our financial crisis. I wish Randy lots of luck in challenging Senator Schumer, and I am particularly a very strong advocate of primaries as a good thing for democracy.”

Credico said he would have run against Christine Quinn last year, but deferred to Yetta Kurland, who mounted a surprisingly strong race against the City Council speaker.

“I’m going to be like Kurland,” Credico predicted. “I’ll probably lose. I’m going to be on the ballot in November — as a Libertarian, Green or Freedom Party,” he said, referring to the Personal Freedom Party that governor candidate Kristin Davis, the Manhattan madam who supplied Eliot Spitzer with hookers, is running on.

Kurland said of Credico, “Randy is a great guy, and I know him from his work in the community. Schumer is obviously a very well-known, very powerful figure, but I always think it’s great to have as many people as possible in the political process. It raises the choices for voters. I would say Randy is certainly more liberal than Schumer on many issues — but it’s hard to say all across the board. I’m happy that Chuck Schumer recently came out in favor of gay marriage.”

Kurland called the debate that The Villager sponsored last year for the Third District City Council candidates “very successful.”

Of a potential Credico-Schumer debate, Kurland indicated she’d like to see more of the same, asking, “My question is, would it be a Villager-sponsored debate?”

Holds a ‘FUN’draiser
Last Saturday, stand-up comics performed at what was billed as a Credico “FUNdraiser” at Desmond’s Tavern, on E. 29th St. At the end of his routine, “Professor” Corey, 95, a staunch Credico supporter, fielded questions from the audience.

“I only have two hours,” he deadpanned.

“What about Red China?” someone called out.

“Yes…,” Corey said, pausing for a moment. “Red China goes very well on a yellow tablecloth.”

“I want to thank everyone who made it here tonight,” Corey said, adding, “I want to thank those who are making it somewhere else.”

Credico then did his impressions with John McDonagh, host of WBAI radio’s “Radio Free Eireann,” on which Credico appears once a month.

Credico ended with a flurry of rapid-fire imitations: Pat Robertson, George W. Bush, George H. Bush — “he’s easier,” he noted, mimicking the senior Bush’s high nasal voice — James Mason, Jimmy Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, Reagan. Saying Reagan had been up for Bogart’s role in “Casablanca,” he did a folksy, halting, Reaganesque delivery of Bogart’s famous “hill of beans” speech. Thank God he didn’t get the part, everyone in the audience must have been thinking.

“I’m going to go through with this,” Credico vowed of his campaign. “Tonight we raised $20. I’ve got a $75 bar tab.”

Filed in: Campaign News

After 19 Years, Released From Prison Under the Rockefeller Drug-Law Reforms

By admin  

 

Randy Credico says: I am happy to report that mr. williams was released today…after my column on(Alternet) http://www.alternet.org/drugs/108021/beaten,_tortured_and_sentenced_25-to-life_for_minor_drug_offense/  the story of his release on NPR that came out today…thanks to all involved in the conitnual movement to change the laws from the DPA to the Correctional Association to  Judge Marks (who visited williams with me and journalist Silvina Sterin back in 2002) to Jeffrion Aubry and of course the William Moses Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice where i had the honor and unique pleasure to serve as director for 12 years  and all the others particlularly Anthony Papa, the cofounder of Mothers of the NY Disappeard …Williams’ mother has been part of that group for 10 years and spent time with the Kunstler Fund in Tulia Texas working with the mothers of the Tulia 46..keep on fighting…there are many still rotting like Junior Gumbs (20 years), Larry Comfort (29 years) and Darius King (who is doing 12 to 25 years) for a dime bag..many many more.

 

http://www.wnyc.org/news/articles/152200.

(photos omitted)

After 19 Years, Released From Prison Under the Rockefeller Drug-Law Reforms

by Maria Scarvalone

NEW YORK, NY March 23, 2010 —Last year, New York State overhauled what many saw as the overly severe Rockefeller drug laws. The changes eliminated mandatory minimum sentences for most drug offenses, expanded drug treatment alternatives, and reduced some penalties. But what about the people still behind bars under the old sentences?

Reporter Maria Scarvalone met with one prisoner who has spent almost two decades in prison under the laws.

On a cold February afternoon, guards eye Amir Varick Amma as he walks into the crowded visitor room at Eastern Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison in Ulster County. Doors buzz and keys rattle over the din of conversation. It’s a routine Amma knows well. He’s spent the last 19 years in prison as one of tens of thousands of men and women who, under the Rockefeller drug laws, received long sentences for dealing drugs.

Amma, a tall man from Queens with a confident smile and firm handshake, was arrested in 1991 in a drug investigation in Albany. He was 23 years old at the time. Police claimed he was selling cocaine, though Amma denies it. Because he wouldn’t testify against others, Amma turned down a plea bargain that would have given him a maximum six-year sentence. It was a gamble he lost. At trial, he was convicted of two drug felonies — the most serious for possessing two ounces of cocaine — and was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.
Amir Varick Amma was convicted in 1992 of two drug felonies, the worst of which was possession of two ounces of cocaine, and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. He says he’s a new man, and changed his name in prison this year to prove it, from Anthony Williams to L. Amir A. Varick Amma.

“When I got that 25 to life, I just couldn’t believe it,” Amma says. “Today I still can’t believe it. I hate to tell people my time because individuals look at me like, ‘Yo, you got 25 to life? I copped out to two bodies and got ten to life!’ The Son of Sam killer, he received 25-to-life. So, okay, society put me equal with these individuals, 25-to-life? I can’t really say what a just sentence would be, but I know 25-to-life, that’s not just.”

David Soares, Albany’s District Attorney, agrees. “It’s a travesty of justice, really,” Soares says. He has long championed reform of the drug laws, signed into effect in 1973 by then-Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, who ushered them through the legislature.

“What characterized the drug laws and what made these laws very unique was that the sentences were very severe, placing mandatory minimums for very small amounts of drugs,” Soares says. “For the same crime in Albany County, if everything was the same in 2010 as they were in 1991, Mr. Amma would receive about seven years.”

At dawn on a recent morning in Harlem, prison-reform activists get ready to board two buses. They’re headed to Albany along with hundreds of others to lobby legislators. It’s the efforts of dogged activists like these that have lead to reforms in the past six years.

But Robert Gangi, head of the Correctional Association, says the reforms have not gone far enough.

“There were significant reforms enacted to the Rockefeller drug laws last year. The problem is that the reform enacted did not represent full repeal, so there are still mandatory sentencing provisions on the books in New York State that will cause the incarceration of thousands of low-level drug offenders each year,” Gangi says.
Eastern Correctional Facility, the maximum-security prison in Napanoch, NY, where Amma has spent the last eight of his 19 years in prison. It is one of the oldest prisons in New York, and opened in 1900.

Nazimova Varick, Amma’s mother, is one of dozens of family members continuing to fight for reform.

“I gave my word so I have to come, but my heart is heavy, real heavy. But I’m here,” Varick says.

She feels she’s done her own time, waiting for her son’s release. Back at her Queens home, a pair of shoes sits near the front door. For her, the shoes are a symbol of hope, one she’s kept these many years of waiting while battling her own cancer and heart problems.

“I took my son’s shoes everyplace I went, because I believe this was symbolic of my son walking out of prison. He will put these shoes on to fulfill my prayers, and then he can throw them away,” Varick says.

While his mother waits, Amma has tried to move his own life forward. He has taken college courses, tutored other inmates, and graduated from the prison ministry program. He says he’s a new man, and even changed his name to prove it — from Anthony Williams to L. Amir A. Varick Amma. Changes, though, that weren’t enough to get him out of prison.
Amma’s shoes, which his mother has kept during his imprisonment, sit near her front door as a symbol of hope that he will come home. She’s carried them with her from home to home over the years, and turned the shoes to face into the house when she learned he would be released.

After the first reforms in 2004, Amma’s request for re-sentencing was denied. He’d been caught smoking pot in the prison courtyard seven years earlier, making him ineligible under the strict reform law rules. Ironically, the way the reform laws were written, he would have been eligible if he’d been convicted of a worse drug felony in 1992.

“That really crushed me — I think that crushed me more than actually being sentenced for the original 25 to life,” Amma says.

Two years later, his petition for merit time early release was denied, for the same reason. Then when he applied for clemency, that too was denied. But in January, his luck finally changed. He applied for re-sentencing under the latest reform law and the judge reduced his sentence enough to be paroled.

Assistant District Attorney Sean Childs says that this time, there was no legal reason to oppose the re-sentencing. “He’s been incarcerated for 20 years and we were just trying to make sure justice was done that day,” Childs says.

After the hearing, Amma rose and extended his hand to Childs and to the judge. “That was a first time experience. I’ve never had a defendant shake my hand,” Childs says. Sitting in prison only days from his release, Amma explains why he acted so unpredictably. “That was the first step: to surprise the judge and everybody else,” Amma says. “I’m not a monster. I’m just a human being that made a stupid mistake when I was young,” Amma says.

Then he turned around and his lawyer asked Amma for his mother’s phone number to notify her of the news. That was the first time Amma cried. “I’m re-sentenced!” he exclaimed. His lawyer asked him again for his mother’s phone number, but Amma was too overcome to speak. Finally, he motioned for a pen and wrote the number down. “I still don’t believe it right now,” Amma says about the ruling.

Amma is a lucky man. Fewer than a thousand drug felons have been re-sentenced so far — out of the more than 10,000 incarcerated in New York prisons.

Today, March 23, Amma is to be released. But he knows he is about to face a series of new challenges. Trying to reconnect with his two sons– one he has never met– and making a living in a tough job market, especially difficult for a felon who has never used a cell phone or the internet.

Still, Amma is trying to stay positive.

“What this time did for me, it made me realize that I have the power to have perseverance in the face of adversity. Anything that comes my way, I can handle it,” he says.
Amma’s mother, “Queen” Nazimova Varick, had this outfit made for her son to wear home from prison. She thinks Amma, who studied Black history in prison, will like the fabric’s motif of the Egyptian ankh, symbolizing life.

For Amma’s mother, her son’s coming home is an answered prayer, but she will not relax until she sees him a free man.

“Lord, don’t let me die while my child’s in prison, and don’t let my child die in prison.” Varick says. “Until he walks out of the door, until I see my child and I embrace him, the fear is still there. It’s still there. It hasn’t gone away. It’s even worse now, because it’s so close. You know, you say ‘Gee, I came so far – will I make it to the finish line?’”

For Amma, it’s just the beginning — of a new life without bars. According to a recent Legal Aid study, he stands a good chance of never returning to prison. Since the first drug law reforms, the recidivism rate for people re-sentenced and released early from prison has been less than 10 percent.

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Credico FUNraiser Video /Watch:http://vimeo.com/10318703

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See it here at :    http://vimeo.com/10318703

Randy Credico for US Senate from NY, comedy fundraiser featuring Alex, Norman Thomas Marshall, Scott Blakeman, Irwin Corey, Randy Credico, John McDonagh at Desmond’s Tavern in New York City, March 20, 2010.

00:00 Alex comic guitar medley
08:50 Norman Marshall play on John Brown
20:20 Scott Blakeman political comedy
38:25 Professor Irwin Corey – 95 years old – The World’s Foremost Authority
72:55 Randy Credico & John McDonagh – political impersonations
86:25 Randy Credico stand up
119:00 Alex closing songs

Filed in: Campaign News