And, as a matter of fact, I am the chairman of the Amadou Diallo Foundation.
In 1975 I was among a group of blacks who formed the Black Americans in Support of Israel Committee.
I'm confident that, were I mayor, I would do some things differently than he has. But I think there's a world of difference between him and his immediate predecessor.
I went downtown as a lawyer and then I worked in a liquor store at night, as I had done all through law school. And so when I got to the point where I could give up the night job, I joined the political club.
I haven't committed a crime. What I did was fail to comply with the law.
I finished law school in '56, but I was working two jobs.
Children are amazing, and while I go to places like Princeton and Harvard and Yale, and of course I teach at Columbia, NYU, and that's nice and I love students, but the most fun of all are the real little ones, the young ones.
As a matter of fact, even when I finished law school, I had no notion of public service then.
And I tell people I'm in charge of children, children I haven't even met yet.
My mother came here to New York. She and my grandmother were domestics, cooking, cleaning for other people.
I went to Israel when the missiles were falling there.
But I make the observation that no one of us would do things exactly alike.
I love children, and most of my involvement now has to do with children or youth programs.
So it's a mistake for someone to think that they bailed New York out. They did assist us, for which we are grateful, but it's a mistake to say we bailed New York out by giving them a grant of money to help those poor people who throw it away on welfare.
Well, I was about six or seven, and my mother and father separated.