The West Indian American Day Parade, the largest annual street celebration in New York City, was an explosion of colorful costumes, a haze of spiced food and a thunder of steel-band music yesterday, flowing down Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn. But first came the politicians, strutting for support from one of the city's burgeoning immigrant groups.
The Caribbean festival drew state and local politicians by the dozens, demonstrating the infusion of new and potential voters represented by immigrants, including those from the Caribbean islands.
The political overlay on the parade, which a half-dozen years ago was just a large but local ethnic festival, was particularly significant given the cancellation of this year's Labor Day Parade because of weakening support for the event among unions. When organized labor was in its glory, that parade represented an opportunity for a command performance for any savvy politician.
So it was yesterday at the West Indian American Carnival Day. Officials from Governor Mario M. Cuomo and Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, and political hopefuls ranging from Al Sharpton to Bernadette Castro, both candidates for the United States Senate, crowded a pre- parade breakfast yesterday in the Crown Heights neighborhood and then led the parade, which in recent years has grown to attract as many as 2 million people.
"There's a growing recognition that the West Indian community has become one of the most important political forces in the city," said Marty Markowitz, a state senator representing Crown Heights, which has a large Caribbean population.
Politicians also made their presence known in other raucous parades upstate, on blustery boardwalks in the Rockaways and in 30-second attack adds broadcast from Long Island to Buffalo, as the summer campaign for governor shifted into high gear for the Sept. 13 primary and the November election beyond.
Estimates of the Caribbean population in New York City run as high as 500,000, and the Department of Planning reported that from 1982 to 1989 153,000 people from 23 Caribbean countries moved to the city. In the 1980's, the department said, more immigrants came to New York from Jamaica than from any other country except the Dominican Republic.
The culture of the Caribbean was on full display yesterday. Eastern Parkway was lined with stands offering an array of foods for sale, including curried goat, pigs' feet and fried plantains.
As flatbed trucks rolled down Eastern Parkway, the infectious pounding of the drum and brass music had the crowd dancing, leaving out almost no one. A man caught in the spirit grabbed the hand of a police officer and had her boogeying, though reluctantly, and the driver of a bus crossing Eastern Parkway on Nostrand Avenue was bouncing up and down in his seat to the music.
Chance With the Crowd
But everywhere the culture of politics was evident. Political signs were plastered on almost every available street light and utility pole. Before the parade began in earnest, the politicians had their chance with the crowd, walking, waving and shaking hands.
Ruth W. Messinger, the Manhattan Borough President, said the Caribbean parade has "gotten the attention of the political community in greater degrees in the last five or six years."
She said that for Labor Day in the last couple of years, some politicians had attended both the unions' parade in Manhattan and then the Caribbean parade.
The Labor Day Parade, which became an annual event beginning in 1981, was held off and on for nearly 40 years and always drew a hefty share of politicians. Labor leaders decided to cancel this year's parade and hold the event every other year because the decline in union membership made the event a financial strain on locals, said Ted H. Jacobsen, the secretary of the New York City Central Labor Council.
Although Mr. Jacobsen was not ready to declare labor politically impotent because its parade was canceled, other labor leaders said the loss of verve for the event seemed to be part of a trend following recent losses in Congress - including the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement and the failure of legislation that would have banned the use of permanent replacements for strikers.
'The Cheapest Poll'
"I wish our members were as enthusiastic about their unions as Caribbeans are about their roots and ethnicity," said Jan D. Pierce, the vice president of the Communications Workers of America for the Northeast region.
Norman M. Adler, a political consultant advising Attorney General G. Oliver Koppell among other candidates, called attendance at parades "the cheapest poll" for determining whether a community's potential political power was growing or shrinking. He said the burgeoning Caribbean and Puerto Rican parades were evidence of the rising power of immigrant groups.
By 1 A.M., the police had not yet released an estimate of the size of the crowd. They said one participant, Marc Rock, 29, of Queens, was killed when he fell from a float and was crushed under its wheels. Sixty-nine other people suffered various injuries, mostly minor, and 39 were taken to hospitals, the Emergency Medical Service said.
With the Labor Day Parade canceled, Mr. Adler predicted last week, the Caribbean parade "is going to be the politicians' substitute photo-op."
The pre- parade breakfast, held at a social club at Utica Avenue and Eastern Parkway, brought together the politicians and more than a hundred leaders of the Caribbean community. And the efforts by the politicians to woo the community leaders were plain to see.
"It's true we have to get to know each other better," Mr. Giuliani said. "My success as Mayor has a lot to do with your success as a community."
And Mr. Cuomo, rolling out his joke du jour, said he was asked yesterday if he was planning to attend the parade, and "I said, 'Of course: I'm from Jamaica'." That's Jamaica, Queens.
The Governor's joke drove home a point - that politicians now think it is smart to identify with the Caribbean community. "There was a time when there was Italy, Ireland and Israel for New York City," said Senator Markowitz, the Brooklyn state senate Democrat. "Now you have to add on the Caribbean as a major power center."
A Balancing Act
In turn, the Caribbean community is organizing politically. Una Clarke, a Caribbean-American Councilwoman from Brooklyn, said that a goal had been established for each of the 60 musical and dance groups participating in the parade to register 25 people to vote and that a more comprehensive effort to get Caribbeans to become citizens and register to vote is underway in churches in Brooklyn.
The increasing size of the parade crowds has a political overtone, Ms. Clarke said. "When you look at the numbers of people, you can see a potential to become a serious economic and political force to be reckoned with," she said.
But the rise of ethnic groups also represents a balancing act for
politicians. And yesterday's march down Eastern Parkway demonstrated that, too. The parade went past 770 Eastern Parkway, the headquarters of the Lubavitcher Hasidic movement, which was the nerve center of that community as it prepared for the observance of Rosh ha-Shanah.
City officials negotiated with both Caribbean and Hasidic leaders for months in an attempt to avoid tensions between the two groups. The 1991 disturbances in Crown Heights were started after a Guyanese boy was killed when struck by a car driven by a Hasidic Jew. A Jewish student was fatally stabbed later that night.
There was also concern that the choice of the Rev. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr. as one of the parade's marshals would increase friction between the groups. Mr. Chavis, recently ousted as head of the N.A.A.C.P., embraced black leaders, particularly Louis Farrakhan, minister of the Nation of Islam, whom many Jews view as anti-Semitic.
But the police reported no problems of that nature. And the only jostling appeared to take place among politicians.
Mark Green, the City Comptroller, said yesterday that he had told Mrs. Castro, a newcomer to the campaign business, that "the only thing worse than fund raising is the elbowing at the front of the parade lines."
