On Sunday, a former leader of the Puerto Rican terrorist organization FALN (Armed Forces of National Liberation) led Manhattan’s Puerto Rican Day Parade, as New York Post reports, “riding out in front as the guest of honor with his fist thrust defiantly in the air.”
That convicted terrorist, Oscar Lopez Rivera, was in prison for 35 years for his association with FALN, a group that set bombs and launched other attacks in Manhattan back in the 1970s and 1980s. Tony Senft, a retired NYPD detective who lost an eye diffusing one of those bombs at a courthouse, told the NY Post, “It’s repulsive, I’m sick to my stomach,” seeing Rivera propped up on the float next to City Council speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito.
“I don’t understand how anyone can march with a known terrorist,” Senft added. “I’m Italian, but John Gotti doesn’t represent me. I wouldn’t march down the street with him.”
Another parade attendee, Thomas Connor, lost his dad in a 1975 attack and said he wasn’t surprised that the councilwoman was cozied up to the terrorist: ”I think Mark-Viverito is a radical person, and she’s not going to stop until she gets to honor left-wing terrorists.”
Rivera’s participation in the parade was controversial from the start. Mayor Bill de Blasio promised not to appear in the parade if Rivera was going to be there. Yet, de Blasio proudly marched anyway. The Post asked the mayor for comment, but he gave none.
However, Senft got right to the point, “De Blasio is prostituting himself for votes. He’s doing whatever he has to do to not let the Puerto Rican people to get mad at him.”
Corporate sponsors pulled support from the parade because of a petition by Connor who led a boycott bringing along with him the likes of AT&T, Coca-Cola, JetBlue, NBC, the Yankees, Telemundo, and others.
“You’re standing on the side of the street with your 10-year-old kid, what do you say to him?” Connor wondered. “‘There goes Oscar Lopez Rivera — he set off hundreds of bombs in New York City years ago and he’s never apologized?’ Is that what you say to your kid?”
To be fair, what do you tell your kid when Mayor de Blasio saunters by?