Long before Curtis Sliwa became the Republican nominee for mayor of New York, long before his multi-decade career as a talk radio host preaching law and order, long before he launched the beret-sporting volunteer crimewatch group known as the Guardian Angels, he was a high school student at Brooklyn Prep in Crown Heights. Heading to school in the early '70s, Sliwa would sometimes spot the Maccabees , a mostly Hasidic organization that patrolled the area to protect Jews from muggings and other assaults.

A couple blocks from Brooklyn Prep, Sliwa would watch Black Panthers serving free breakfasts to undernourished kids. Passing through East Harlem, he'd see the Young Lords , a militant group aligned with the Panthers; they impressed him, he recalls, by trying "to convince Puerto Rican gang m

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