PROGRAM
Please join us as Roosevelt House, in collaboration with Spectrum News NY1, hosts a special panel discussion on the career and legacy of the 103rd Mayor of New York City, John V. Lindsay. Examining what is widely considered to be one of the most tumultuous and transformational periods in the history of New York, this panel will consider Mayor Lindsay’s eight years in office, from 1966 to 1974, and the staggering array of accomplishments and challenges that characterized his time at City Hall.
Inspired by a three-part audio series on the podcast “You Decide with Errol Louis,” this conversation will be moderated by NY1 Political Anchor Errol Louis, and feature an array of Lindsay-era veterans: former longtime top aide to Lindsay, Sid Davidoff; Special Assistant to Mayor Lindsay and one of his chief political advisors, Ronnie Eldridge; Lindsay’s Deputy Press Secretary Robert Laird; and author of Summer in the City: John Lindsay, New York, and the American Dream, the Interim Director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Program Joseph P. Viteritti.
Panelists:
Sid Davidoff is a former longtime Administrative Assistant and personal aide to Mayor Lindsay. In 1968, when students took over Hamilton Hall at Columbia University, Lindsay sent Davidoff as the key mediator to broker peace. Davidoff was also at the center of a brawl, later known as “The Hard Hat Riot,” when he lowered the flag atop City Hall to honor the students killed at Kent State, leading to a fight between antiwar demonstrators and City Hall construction workers. Tension with President Nixon’s administration followed, earning Davidoff a place on Nixon’s infamous “Enemies List,” where he was described as “a first class S.O.B., wheeler-dealer and suspected bagman.”
Ronnie Eldridge is a former Special Assistant to Mayor Lindsay. She later served as a City Council Member representing Manhattan’s Upper West Side from 1989 to 2001. An activist, businesswoman, and television personality, she is currently the host of the CUNY TV talk show Eldridge & Co. A protegee of Robert F. Kennedy Sr., Eldridge served in both Mayor Lindsay’s administration and in the cabinet of Governor Mario Cuomo as Director of the Division for Women.
Robert Laird served for both of Mayor Lindsay’s terms as Deputy Press Secretary. The position was offered to him following his coverage, for the New York World-Telegram & Sun, of then-Congressman Lindsay’s 1965 mayoral campaign, and led to a friendship that lasted until Lindsay’s death in 2000. Now a senior principal with public relations firm the Dilenschneider Group, he is a former longtime reporter and editor at the New York Daily News, where, over nearly three decades, he served as chief editorial writer, deputy editorial page editor, columnist, and op-ed page editor.
Joseph P. Viteritti is the Interim Director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Program, the Thomas Hunter Professor of Public Policy; the former Chair of the Hunter College Urban Policy and Planning Department; and the Founding Faculty Chair of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Program. He is the editor of Summer in the City: John Lindsay, New York, and the American Dream and author of The Pragmatist: Bill de Blasio’s Quest to Save the Soul of New York. His forthcoming book will cover racial politics in our schools.
Errol Louis, moderator, is the host of NY1’s “Inside City Hall,” the preeminent political news show in New York City, as well as Spectrum News’ new national political discussion show “The Big Deal.” Previously, he served as a columnist and editorial board member at the New York Daily News and was a talk show host of WWRL radio. He has won numerous journalism prizes, and has taught at the Pratt Institute, Hunter College, Long Island University, and New York University.
