I share the Olympic Dream. It is bold and beautiful and ours.

I’m sitting here in New York City and trying to hold on to it.

Sure I can read the handwriting on the wall. But I still can dream.

And believe me, dreams can come true.

Sure I have my own Albany devils to point a finger at.
But unlike all the candidates and the elected who are trying to win votes, score points or look good, I only want to keep on dreaming.

I want to watch the track and field events, close up, in my City. I want to rub elbows in the Olympic Village in Queens. I want to live during that magical time when the world returns to New York. I want to relive those vivid memories of the ’64 World’s Fair. I want to, well, live the dream.

I’m doing my best not to get caught up in the ugly political game that is part of the fallout of the recent rejection of the West Side Stadium – the Olympic Stadium – by two men in a room.

Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, the leaders of that ethically bankrupt and pathetically ineffective state Legislature, never came to the table to make the Olympic dream a reality. They merely postured and played brinkmanship in order to cut deals for their own special interests.

Silver, to be more specific, who is supposed to use his vote on the Public Authorities Control Board on behalf of the people of New York State, bargained only for his lower Manhattan District. And Bruno continues to dis the entire city in order to provide upstate with every drop available. After all, these are the guys that repealed the commuter tax costing the City some half-a-billion a year and wouldn’t even reinstate it after September 11. A mathematical footnote: if the commuter tax wasn’t repealed in 1996, the City would have received far more money than the $300 million that Albany just deprived it of.

But if the Speaker felt the way he says he now does, why weren’t the State’s three men in a room (Silver, Bruno and Pataki) in that room with Mayor Bloomberg, Deputy Mayor Doctoroff and NYC2012’s Jay Kriegel, trying to make the Olympic Dream come true.

No, their brinkmanship style that brought you a score of late budgets only works when you pass deadlines and refuse to cooperate. Dialogue has never been their strong suit. The leaders of the State Legislature have once again lived up to the ugly position of showing the body to be the most dysfunctional in all the 50 states.

“If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem,” to borrow from the strange but brilliant thoughts of the late Black Panther turned patriot, Eldridge Cleaver. And clearly Bruno and Silver have been far from trying to solve the problem. The ugliness of self-interest and State Legislative process has brought the Olympic Dream to the verge of permanent sleep.

The bomb throwers – those who seek to unseat the Mayor and choose to use the failed stadium vote as fodder in their campaign canons – are not part of the solution either.

This is not the time for public posturing or political grandstanding. This is the time where creative and imaginative dreamers must do what they to best: create and dream.

We have always preferred a Queens Stadium, we still do. But we were ready to subjugate our preference to the bigger dream. We still are.

We stand with the Queens Borough President and most of the Queens elected officials. We stand with the people of Queens who also dream of a New York Olympics. (By the way, without a Queens Stadium, our borough stands to gain an incredible abundance of the windfall of development goodies that comes with an Olympics.)

We stand with those people who may still have an outside chance of turning this nightmare back into a dream. And over a weekend of scurrying, these men -- the Mayor and company -- met with Fred Wilpon and his New York Mets organization and have offered an alternate stadium plan -- in Queens.

But location is not important -- the dream is!

Perhaps NYC2012 Olympics cannot be saved. Perhaps the task cannot be done. But the current opening of the tiny window is merely momentary. We call upon all Olympic dreamers to follow the lead of those with the process in their hands.
Put aside political differences, ignore regional interests, forget borough preferences and focus on the dream.

This is not a test, Mr. Mayor. This is not success or failure that is measured by votes. This is about dreams and magic. This is about ideas and miracles. This is about a New York City Olympics. And we’re still dreaming.
Mr. Mayor, please don’t give up on the dream.

Ask any Olympian, dreams really can come true.