Mayor DiLieto

On December 21, 1987 the New Haven Board of Aldermen and Mayor signed into law a city ordinance creating the New Haven City Peace Commission. The Commission was an official city body, with some modest financial means, to work for world peace.

The Mayor was Ben DiLieto.

Some time previously I was part of a group of New Haveners who went to see the Mayor to demand that he sign the ordinance because "you owe us." I was involved for two reasons. For one thing I was working closely with Alderman Tom Holahan for city involvement in the Peoples Peace Appeal. And for another thing I was one of those whom the Mayor owed for his having been elected.

To understand, one has to go back to the Black Panthers in New Haven of 1970. Our telephones were tapped at that time if we had some relation to Panther Party, which was involved in establishing free breakfast programs and health clinics in the Black ghettos of New Haven, as well as selling their newspapers on the streets, recruiting new members and sandbagging their headquarters against attack. It was not hard to know because the phone taps were crude and sometimes when you picked up the phone you heard the tape recording announcing whose phone it was.

Over a decade later a man walked in to see attorney John Williams in New Haven, gave him a file box full of cards and left without giving his name. It was the box of cards with the names and information of the hundreds of people whose telephones had been tapped.

Attorney Williams hired people to call all of the names and ask for money to be part of a class-action lawsuit. It was a good deal, we were to find out later when we each got something like a thousand dollars in damages when the suit was settled. The telephone company and the FBI settled quickly, but the third plaintiff was the Chief of Police at the time, Ben DiLieto. Despite the fact that his family was part of the rackets (his brother was said to run prostitution and his son was killed in a drug shootout), DiLieto was not a rich man.

DiLieto ducked the subpoena, fled town and held a press conference in another city, announcing that he would be a candidate for Mayor. He ran on the unofficial slogan of having saved the city from the Communists and the Panthers. Given the racism and anti-communism of the 80's it was an unbeatable platform, and he was elected Mayor.

Hence the reason why we told the Mayor that "you owe us." And, remarkably, with good nature, he did not disagree, but signed into law the New Haven City Peace Commission.

I like to think that the story proves that everyone has a role to play in creating a culture of peace.

Mayor Dilieto with Soviet visitors in 1984