It is 4:35 A.M. on a gusty and cold March morning in 1989. A brown station wagon, with it’s headlights off, screeches to a halt in front of 6155 Broadway, a modest 2-story office building in the Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx in New York City. Across the broad avenue, Van Cortlandt Park lies shrouded in a chilly predawn mist. Suddenly, a mustached man leaps from the driver’s seat wielding two canisters of gasoline. He quickly sets them alight and lobs them into the building. It bursts into flames.
Two Emergency Medical Service paramedics, responding to an unrelated call, see the man running from the flames. The man dives into the idling station wagon and tears down Broadway, nearly colliding with their ambulance. The paramedics chase the car for several blocks before losing it.
Nearly 20 years have passed, and Riverdale has not forgotten. 6155 Broadway had housed the offices of the Riverdale Press, a family-owned weekly newspaper operating in the neighborhood since 1950. A week before the firebombing, on February 23, the paper had written an editorial critical of major American bookstore chains for pulling “Satanic Verses” from their shelves. The stores cited the well-being of their employees as the reason for this move. The novel, by Salman Rushdie, had so offended Muslims that many followed the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in advocating the author’s murder.
Bernard Stein, editorial writer and co-publisher of the Riverdale Press, wrote, “The bookstore chains have enormous power. Their decisions can determine what thoughts are disseminated in what form. With that power should go responsibility. Book stores sell ideas and visions; they feed the mind and the spirit. They have an obligation to safeguard the freedom of expression.”
Not too long ago, many news publications across the country and close to home, such as the NYPress, declined to reprint the Danish cartoons for fear of reprisal from Islamic fanatics.
These incidents call into question as a local issue the background of the Democratic presidential nominee, Barrack Obama. Riverdale is left wondering how Obama will respond to similar assaults on the tradition of free speech enjoyed across America and deeply loved in this community. Since beginning his campaign, it has come to light that Obama has campaigned for Raila Odinga in Kenya, is connected to ACORN’s swing state ballot-stuffing, and has associated with the likes Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dorn, and Louis Farrakhan. It is yet to be seen if Riverdale can swallow Obama’s ties to radicals, Islamists, and terrorists and support him in his bid for the Oval Office.