and as much as much of it was well-deserved, he earned himself the right to call John Lennon his friend. I remember him from WABC Channel 7 Eyewitness News when I was in high school. His reporting on Willowbrook State School was a major contributing factor to the passage of a federal law, called the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act of 1980.
Back in 1965, NY Senator Bobby Kennedy, with a family tradition of advocacy for the mentally disabled, toured Willowbrook and lamented the residents "living in filth and dirt, their clothing in rags, in rooms less comfortable and cheerful than the cages in which we put animals in a zoo". Geraldo carried on with this important work of bringing change to a system of warehousing children in a snake pit, and with his friend John Lennon he made a difference.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_in_New_York_CityRecorded on 30 August 1972 at Madison Square Garden in New York City, Lennon performed two shows, one in the afternoon and one in the evening, to raise money for children with mental challenges at friend Geraldo Rivera's request. Rivera introduces Lennon and Ono at the beginning of the album, and he is referenced in Lennon's impromptu revised lyrics in the opening song, "New York City."
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