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Slain writer played key role for park and for Pagan

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  • Slain writer played key role for park and for Pagan

    Slain writer played key role for park and for Pagan

    The Villager (New York)
    Volume 75, Number 12
    August 10 - 16, 2005

    By Lincoln Anderson

    Steven Vincent of E. 11th St., who was murdered on Aug. 2 in Basra,
    will go down in history as the first American journalist killed in
    Iraq. But before his tragic end he also carved a place for himself in
    East Village history as a core member of the group that brought City
    Councilmember Antonio Pagan to power and helped bring about the
    cleanup of Tompkins Square Park.

    Vincent, 49, an art journalist turned war correspondent, had returned
    to Iraq three months ago for his third visit there since the start of
    the war. He was planning to come back to the East Village in
    mid-August to write a book on the history of the city of Basra. The
    Sunday before his murder he had written a column that ran in The New
    York Times charging that insurgents had infiltrated the Iraqi police
    in Basra and were acting as a death squad.

    Speaking last Sunday, Lisa Ramaci, Vincent's widow, said she felt the
    Times column probably is what caused his death.

    `I'm going to say that was the straw that broke the camel's back,' she
    said. `He was going around asking a lot of probing questions,
    including to a lot of [radical cleric] Motaq al-Sadr's men. He was
    going around with a female translator - that was offensive to
    them. Steve was saying Basra had fallen under the control of radical
    Shiites - and they want women to walk around in a bag. I think he was
    basically killed to shut him up. Steve pulled no punches, he called
    them as he saw them, and that's why he's dead,' Ramaci said.

    Vincent and his translator were abducted by masked gunmen after he had
    left a money-changing business. Vincent was shot once in the head and
    four times in the torso, according to Ramaci. His interpreter was shot
    three times in the chest, but survived. Ramaci said official sources
    told her that the two were taken to a warehouse where their captors
    were overheard shouting and cursing at them for five or six hours -
    calling Vincent an infidel and his translator a whore - before they
    were killed.

    Ramaci said the translator is being held at a military hospital and
    believes she can identify two of the perpetrators.

    Vincent had visited Iraq twice before, in the fall of 2003 and in
    early 2004. These trips produced a book, `In the Red Zone.' He also
    wrote for the National Review and Christian Science Monitor while in
    Iraq.

    On 9/11, Vincent had watched from his rooftop as the second hijacked
    jet hit the twin towers and then and there decided to write about
    political issues.

    `He didn't sleep for weeks. He was so freaked out at what he saw,'
    Ramaci said. `He didn't want to go back to art journalism.

    Ramaci said Vincent, who was of Armenian descent, had become
    fascinated with Islam and had read the Koran and tons of books about
    the religion.

    Before leaving for Iraq this last time, Ramaci said Vincent told her
    that if he got killed it should be considered `a casualty of war - and
    you can chalk me up as one more victim of the World Trade Center.'

    Vincent was from California and hitchhiked his way to New York. He and
    Ramaci met while they were smoking in the lobby of a Times Square
    movie theater showing `The Road Warrior.'

    Ramaci had homesteaded a building on E. 11th St. that the city took
    from a derelict landlord, and two years after meeting, Vincent moved
    in with her. Concerned at the direction of the neighborhood and
    wanting to do something about it, they were among the 13 founding
    members, along with Pagan, of the Democratic Action Club. DAC felt
    that, after 19 years representing the neighborhood, Councilmember
    Miriam Friedlander had to go. Pagan was their candidate.

    They were tired of all-night `metal jams' in the park without a curfew
    at which people would pound away on fenders or garbage can lids or
    anything metal they could get their hands on. After the 1988 riot over
    the proposed curfew, the administration left Tompkins Square alone for
    four or five years and it became a homeless tent city. Parents had to
    clean up hypodermic needles from playgrounds before their children
    could play in them. Their were complaints about `aggressive
    panhandling.' DAC said enough was enough. Vincent, in particular,
    personally took on the squatters who at one point were in as many as
    25 buildings, gaining their everlasting enmity.

    Vincent, who was first a writer and then editor of the East Villager,
    a local newspaper, became the club's main writer. With Howard Hemsley,
    Pagan's campaign manager for both of Pagan's elections, Vincent wrote
    DAC's `manifesto,' which was printed on the back of the East Villager,
    and also their `10 points' flier that was posted around the
    neighborhood. The flier asked if people wanted the park back or if
    they were tired of Friedlander's policies, with `Join us,' written
    after each point. Vincent was more active in Pagan's first campaign.

    Pagan, who represented the Second District from 1991-97, now works for
    Lower East Side Coalition Housing. He said he rarely speaks to the
    press, but that `This is important.'

    `He was a man of conviction,' Pagan said of Vincent. `Not only a
    dreamer, but a man who transformed things by his actions. You can see
    what we call `the liberation of the streets and park.'

    `At every step of the way, there was Steven,' Pagan said. `There was a
    major team effort, but if you were to separate the few that actually
    impacted things, he was there. He was a true renaissance man. He died
    fighting for what he felt was the truth. It was a big loss, personally
    and collectively.'

    Hemsley kiddingly referred to Vincent as DAC's `minister of
    propaganda.' He said Vincent did have a particular ax to grind with
    squatters, noting that Vincent was adamant about including language
    criticizing them in their `manifesto' and other literature.

    `I remember working with him on the mission statement of purpose for
    our club,' Hemsley said. Part of the statement that Vincent insisted
    be included was that DAC would `refuse to glorify poverty.' `Steve was
    very big on this,' Hemsley said, `upper-class kids coming down to the
    Lower East Side to pretend to be poor for the glamour of poverty. What
    the squatters did was jump in before people who were poor, old or
    unable to squat.'

    One specific point on this theme in the mission statement was: `We
    reject the myth that poverty is cool, somehow politically correct or a
    way to hide from adult responsibility.'

    There were poster wars, in which the squatters would doctor DAC's
    posters, Hemsley said.

    Vincent served for two years on Community Board 3, appointed by
    Pagan. Ramaci served on the board for six years, headed its State
    Liquor Authority Committee, and was also elected a Democratic district
    leader for two years. But the DAC members eventually went back to
    their private lives after they felt their job had been done, Hemsley
    said; they weren't professional politicians to begin with, just
    concerned citizens. After the park was renovated, they tried to bring
    positive uses to it, like the Charlie Parker Jazz Festival, he said.

    Kate Walter was also appointed by Pagan to C.B. 3 at the same time as
    Vincent.

    `He was active in getting the park restored to the community so it was
    usable,' Walter said. `We were considered conservative on the
    community board because we didn't want a tent city in Tompkins Square
    Park. The anarchists all thought it should remain that way. I think
    a lot of people felt like Steve and me,' Walter said, `but they were
    afraid to say it, because nobody wanted to be called a yuppie or a
    gentrifier. And nobody wanted to have another riot, either.'

    Vincent had a running battle with the East Village's anarchist
    newspaper, The Shadow. However, The Shadow's Chris Flash said
    hostilities between them had diminished in recent years.

    `I will admit, in recent years, we had an amicable,
    respect-each-other's-differences sort of relationship,' Flash
    said. `There was no animosity.' Recalling their past newspaper wars,
    he said, `He had a vehicle to attack and we had a vehicle to attack
    back. We didn't draw first blood - they did.'

    A memorial will be held in September, Ramaci said, adding that she is
    thinking of starting a foundation in his name as a Committee to
    Protect Journalists.

    `Steven didn't have the money to hire a security guard or a driver,'
    Ramaci said. `He had himself, his wits and his translator.'

    Ramaci said Vincent's body was still in Basra, where it was being
    autopsied, and that it would be autopsied again when it was returned
    to America. He will be buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn.


    http://www.thevillager.com/villager_119/slainwriterplayedkey.html
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