Last week, New York City's Mayor Rudolph Giuliani announced that the police would begin arresting homeless people as part of a public safety campaign. PNS commentator Robert Lederman, a street artist who has been homeless and arrested for disorderly conduct, is President of A.R.T.I.S.T. (Artists, Response to Illegal State Tactics).

NEW YORK -- He's against raising the minimum wage. He wants to kick people out of the city's repulsive homeless shelters and take away their children if they refuse to work full time in exchange for a few feet of space in which to lie down. He cuts funds to drug programs forcing many addicts to live on the streets. His pandering to real estate interests decimated the city's low income housing and Single Room Occupancy hotels where many homeless once resided. His ongoing war on vending, an occupation which once supported many of the city's thousands of homeless, made panhandling their last resort. Now, because an unidentified black man the mayor believes to be homeless attacked a young white woman with a brick, he wants the NYPD to arrest New Yorkers for nothing more than being homeless. Adolf Crueliani strikes again.

Anyone who thinks this is about protecting the public from crazy people doesn't understand Giuliani. What's at risk is not our safety (more innocent New Yorkers are killed by the New York City police than by deranged homeless people) but the illusion that this mayor made the streets safe. What's at risk is the sky high commercial rents on socially sterilized Madison Avenue. What's at risk is his image in the U.S. Senate race.

I've been homeless and have slept on New York City streets in the depths of winter. Like many people, I found a cardboard box more attractive than going to the city's dangerous and degrading homeless shelters. I never panhandled. I lived by selling my artwork on the sidewalk for whatever I could get. When the police would confiscate my art I'd sell old clothes or books I found in the garbage alongside hundreds of other homeless men and women vendors. In my experience, homeless people as a group are no crazier or more violent or addicted to drugs than the rest of the city's residents. Some are amazingly resourceful in the struggle for survival, eking out a living from the debris of other people's lives. Some are among the most patient, helpful and tolerant people I've ever met. A few are almost as nasty and dangerous as the 107th mayor of New York.

It's easy to look down on the homeless if you have an apartment and a job. For those with a suburban estate and a driveway full of fancy cars the homeless seem like another species. Many of those who live on the streets once had a job, a family, a car and a nice home. For many New Yorkers, losing a job, getting injured, growing old, getting a divorce or becoming depressed could land them on the street in a short time.

It's not surprising that a mayor who doesn't allow other elected officials to hold press conferences on the steps of City Hall thinks homeless people have no right to sit, stand or lay down on a public street. This is the same mayor who believes families should have to apply for a permit to enjoy a family picnic in his newly corportized Central Park.

Instead of using tax dollars to provide inexpensive housing the mayor will now waste millions falsely arresting homeless people for disorderly conduct, jamming the already packed criminal courts. While protesting against Giuliani's various repressive policies, I've been falsely arrested almost 40 times for disorderly conduct. I've never been convicted or paid any fine. Based on the mayor's understanding of law, handing out a leaflet, making a speech or just standing quietly on the sidewalk is sufficient grounds for arrest.

Being harassed, falsely arrested and abused by the police may be the mayor's idea of therapy for the city's already stressed-out homeless. We can only wait to see how many half-asleep homeless people will be shot by the police while resisting arrest for having no place to live or because they acted "suspiciously." Police officers and their unions would do well to refuse to enforce this new policy if only to protect themselves from lawsuits.

Race is the essence of this issue. Most of the city's homeless are African Americans and Latinos. The people that have Giuliani's ear find such people "threatening" when they are doing nothing more than walking down the street minding their own business. Now, thousands of law abiding African American homeless men, many of whom are Vietnam veterans, are being further demonized to make the Giuliani administration appear decisive.

Is this what the mayor's ludicrous upstate campaign ads mean by his "compassion?"

Last weekend, Giuliani's army of 40,000 police began carrying out his latest purge -- twenty-three men and women were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct, a legal euphemism for the crime of having no place to call home. When you hear the story of how Giuliani has changed New York, remember that this, not the bright lights of Times Square or the ringing of the bell in the New York Stock Exchange, is the reality behind that change. Giuliani's New York is a nice place to visit but you wouldn't want to be homeless here.