As immigrants once again redefine what it means to be a New Yorker, we should avoid any policy that drives newcomers--legal or illegal--into legal and economic shadows beyond the reach of the law. That's why Governor Eliot Spitzer's policy of making illegal immigrants eligible for drivers' licenses makes good sense.
Despite the claims of critics that the new license policy will undermine security, the safeguards built into his plan should be enough to maintain our safety. At the same time, they'll expand the pool of insured drivers on our roads.
Most important, licensing drivers is a healthy effort to end the social isolation of illegal immigrants. As the New York City police recognized long ago, they need the help of immigrants--legal and illegal--to keep order. They won't get tips from people who are worried about someone uncovering the state of their immigration status. The logic of that observation led the police to encourage even illegal immigrants to become as much a part of our legal mainstream as possible. The same holds true on drivers' licenses.
Given the Bush Administration's failure to enact any kind of reasonable immigration policy, and concerns about terrorism, the licensing issue is ripe for fearmongers.
But labor unions and the state's Catholic bishops support the plan. It is also likely to gain support from the growing number of immigrant voters, who see attacks on illegals as part of a politics of hostility toward all immigrants.
Finally, Spitzer seems to relish a fight on this one for all the right reasons. Here's hoping that he wins.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Saturday, October 6, 2007
Changing Tides in Long Island City
Look out to sea and you behold a timeless vista. Turn around and look at where the sea meets the shore, as the historian John Stilgoe reminds us, and you'll often see a deeply historic scene. This principle holds not just for the ocean, but for the tidal strait that is the New York City's East River--especially in that part of Queens called Long Island City.
Once an industrial neighborhood sandwiched between Astoria to the north and Greenpoint, Brooklyn to the south, in the last ten years Long Island City-particularly the Hunters Point area--has become the site of new, high-rise developments on the east bank of the East River. New buildings, and the parks opened with them, have transformed the shoreline in a kind of microcosm of recent changes all around New York's waterfront. The results are mixed.
On one hand, the new, green shoreline of Long Island City--with public parks and excellent views of Manhattan--has reclaimed the riverbank for public uses. Affluent newcomers to the neighborhood have brought economic development and a range of stores, cafes, bars and restaurants unimaginable seventeen years ago, when I discovered Long Island City as the home of the excellent Italian restaurant, Manducati's.
In 1980, Long Island City was still a working-class, industrial neighborhood. It had a patchwork quality to it, with simple row houses and small apartments adjoining machine shops and factories. The new shoreline high rises, which lie at the western edge of the old neighborhood, aren't really integrated with the old community. To walk from the subway stop at Vernon and Jackson is to start in the world of working class New York and wind up in an enclave of affluence.
I talked to one woman from the neighborhood, who grew up there and now plans to go to Italy to attend graduate school. She recognizes the pluses and minuses of the recent past, but laments that the population growth brought by the new buildings has made her old neighborhood a more anonymous place. "I don't want my neighbors to be strangers," she said.
Friday, October 5, 2007
Advertising Makes a Subway Car Surreal
On a recent trip aboard the subway shuttle between Grand Central Station and Times Square, I was transported to an alien environment of larger-than-life television stars and outer-space imagery inspired by the NBC series "Heroes." Blame it on the advertising strategies of the MTA.
The interior of the car--walls and ceilings--was decked out entirely to make me think of the show, which depicts our world in the aftermath of a solar eclipse that leaves ordinary people with extraordinary powers. On the ceiling was fiery outer space imagery. On the walls were a dark, handsome fellow with wavy hair and stubble on is chin; a blonde woman in sparking earings; and two intense-looking Asian men. Everywhwere slogans exhorted me to tune in: "New purpose." "New adventure." "New quest."
The all-ad car that I rode in is part of the "brand car" strategy adopted by the MTA and advertisers. Although the concept goes back to at least around 2001, according to the New York Sun, I'd never seen anything so all-encompassing on the Lexington Avenue line, which I ride regularly to work. There, the typical ads tout subway security, the virtues of education and English lessons.
Balancing the demands of big, lucrative clients and less-wealthy small businesses in subway advertising is an old dilemma. In a article published in 1997, the Times described how the MTA was then backtracking from a big-money ad strategy to seek ads from smaller businesses.
Out of such strategies came subway cars with a range of ads--some of them for businesses, some for public institutions. A trip on the IRT brought you face to face with Roach Motel, personal injury lawyers and the City University. These ads weren't always elegant, but their juxtaposition on the walls of a subway car always reminded me of the splendid cacaphony of New York. At the very least, they were good for a laugh. And the best of them--the short poems of the Poetry in Motion series, the biographical blurbs of City University students and faculty, and the AIDS awareness telenovela of Julio y Marisol--were interesting, even inspiring..
I don't pine for the days of subway graffiti, which I always saw as vandalism no better than scribbling in a library book.
But I do like to see my subway cars, like my fellow passengers, reflecting the diversity and energy of the city.
Getting off the shuttle, I checked to see if the car next to mine extolled "Heroes." Instead, it was devoted to the show "Journeyman;" The slogan inside the car read, "Time changes everything." Indeed.
The interior of the car--walls and ceilings--was decked out entirely to make me think of the show, which depicts our world in the aftermath of a solar eclipse that leaves ordinary people with extraordinary powers. On the ceiling was fiery outer space imagery. On the walls were a dark, handsome fellow with wavy hair and stubble on is chin; a blonde woman in sparking earings; and two intense-looking Asian men. Everywhwere slogans exhorted me to tune in: "New purpose." "New adventure." "New quest."
The all-ad car that I rode in is part of the "brand car" strategy adopted by the MTA and advertisers. Although the concept goes back to at least around 2001, according to the New York Sun, I'd never seen anything so all-encompassing on the Lexington Avenue line, which I ride regularly to work. There, the typical ads tout subway security, the virtues of education and English lessons.
Balancing the demands of big, lucrative clients and less-wealthy small businesses in subway advertising is an old dilemma. In a article published in 1997, the Times described how the MTA was then backtracking from a big-money ad strategy to seek ads from smaller businesses.
Out of such strategies came subway cars with a range of ads--some of them for businesses, some for public institutions. A trip on the IRT brought you face to face with Roach Motel, personal injury lawyers and the City University. These ads weren't always elegant, but their juxtaposition on the walls of a subway car always reminded me of the splendid cacaphony of New York. At the very least, they were good for a laugh. And the best of them--the short poems of the Poetry in Motion series, the biographical blurbs of City University students and faculty, and the AIDS awareness telenovela of Julio y Marisol--were interesting, even inspiring..
I don't pine for the days of subway graffiti, which I always saw as vandalism no better than scribbling in a library book.
But I do like to see my subway cars, like my fellow passengers, reflecting the diversity and energy of the city.
Getting off the shuttle, I checked to see if the car next to mine extolled "Heroes." Instead, it was devoted to the show "Journeyman;" The slogan inside the car read, "Time changes everything." Indeed.
Monday, October 1, 2007
Tragedy and Inspiration
When Frank Carvill of the New Jersey National Guard was mortally wounded in an ambush in Baghdad in 2004, one of the men who tried to save him was an Iraqi interpreter attached to his unit. Today, that interpreter and his family are living safely in New Jersey. For that, you can thank the good men of the Jersey Guard---and Frank's own inspiring example.
Suhaib Abdulwahab is the interpreter's name. I met him, and his wife, at a dinner-dance last Saturday night in honor the men from the outfit (3rd Battalion, 112th Field Artillery) killed in two bloody days in Baghdad: Frank, Christopher Duffy, Humberto Timoteo, and Ryan Doltz.
Capt. Don Kennedy, who admired and commanded Frank, told me the story of the ambush and Suhaib's efforts to save Frank's life. Standing with Don, in the back of a crowded VFW hall in Saddle Brook, NJ, it wasn't easy to listen.
I had always consoled myself with the belief that Frank died instantly in an explosion. To learn that he was initially conscious, and that he told his comrades to look first to another man, was difficult to hear--and fully in character for Frank, who always put others first.
Don explained how the men from the outfit, who appreciated Suhaib's willingness to accompany them on dangerous missions, worked to bring over him and his family. (Mike Kelly told the whole story beautifully in today's Record.)
Then he told me something that I'll never forget.
Frank was a major activist in New York and New Jersey for Irish Americans and immigrant rights. And as Don worked against all sorts of bureaucratic obstacles to bring over Suhaib and his family, he thought about Frank and all the work he did for immigrants. Frank became an inspiration.
Frank's death will always be a tragedy, but the great example that he set for so many people will enrich the world for years to come.
Suhaib Abdulwahab is the interpreter's name. I met him, and his wife, at a dinner-dance last Saturday night in honor the men from the outfit (3rd Battalion, 112th Field Artillery) killed in two bloody days in Baghdad: Frank, Christopher Duffy, Humberto Timoteo, and Ryan Doltz.
Capt. Don Kennedy, who admired and commanded Frank, told me the story of the ambush and Suhaib's efforts to save Frank's life. Standing with Don, in the back of a crowded VFW hall in Saddle Brook, NJ, it wasn't easy to listen.
I had always consoled myself with the belief that Frank died instantly in an explosion. To learn that he was initially conscious, and that he told his comrades to look first to another man, was difficult to hear--and fully in character for Frank, who always put others first.
Don explained how the men from the outfit, who appreciated Suhaib's willingness to accompany them on dangerous missions, worked to bring over him and his family. (Mike Kelly told the whole story beautifully in today's Record.)
Then he told me something that I'll never forget.
Frank was a major activist in New York and New Jersey for Irish Americans and immigrant rights. And as Don worked against all sorts of bureaucratic obstacles to bring over Suhaib and his family, he thought about Frank and all the work he did for immigrants. Frank became an inspiration.
Frank's death will always be a tragedy, but the great example that he set for so many people will enrich the world for years to come.
Friday, September 28, 2007
Learning from Newark 1967
According to an urban legend, when Newark, NJ erupted in civil disorders in July 1967 you could stand on the west side of Manhattan and see flames on the horizon. The hard facts of geography make that unlikely, but the story suggests how Newark cast a shadow over the metropolitan area. Now those events are the subject of a strong exhibit, What's Going On? Newark and the Legacy of the Sixties at the New Jersey Historical Society.
The exhibit, mounted at the Society's building in Newark, puts the fortieth anniversary of Newark's disorders in a broad historical context. The show illuminates both Newark's descent into violence and its struggles for recovery.
The show takes the shape of an elongated horseshoe. You enter at a digital timeline, complete with visuals and audio, that sketches out the story of Newark from the 1920s to 2006. Illuminating everything from Pearl Harbor to Cory Booker's election, the timeline can seem fast and busy. Nevertheless, it gives you a basic orientation to what you are about to see.
You move counterclockwise through the exhibit. The opening section addresses Black migration to Newark, neighborhood life, and work.
The show gains depth and momentum as it introduces the voices of Newarkers, which you hear through headphones, relating their experiences in the city. More information setting these people in context--their pictures, their biographies--would have helped. Still, their words invigorate the exhibit.
The racial discrimination, deindustrialization, political corruption, ill-conceived urban renewal schemes, and police brutality that ravaged Newark are all covered in detail. So is the activism that tried to right these wrongs. In this exhibit Newark was, in the words of a Life Magazine headline, a "predictable insurrection."
The 26 deaths of that summer, as I noticed at a memorial service in July, are still deeply felt in Newark. Another audio-visual wall, this one mounted more than halfway through the show, identifies the slain, where they were killed, and situates their deaths in the flow of the upheaval.
What's Going On? tells a story with strong resonance for African Americans, but the exhibit includes other perspectives as well.
For me, the most moving section of the show was a display with three elements: a flag that covered the coffin of Newark Police Detective Frederick Toto, who was shot to death with a .22 round during the disorders; bullets and casings found in a ninth floor apartment of the Hayes Homes projects that strongly suggest the presence of a sniper there; and a painting of Eloise Spellman, who lived in the Hayes Homes one floor above the apartment where the bullets were found. Mrs. Spellman, who was shot in the neck while inside her home, bled to death while waiting for an ambulance.
Acknowledging these two deaths in this way doesn't necessarily heal the pain of the survivors, but it does enable us to contemplate, in one frame, their griefs and losses. In a segregated and polarized country, in a city where the decision to call 1967 a riot or a rebellion still sparks debate, that's progress.
"What's Going On" concludes with Newark's struggles to recover. While there are grounds for optimism, there is still much work to be done. One portion of the exhibit charts Newark's changing unemployment rate in the civilian workforce: in 1960, 8.2%; in 1970, 6.5%; and in 2004, 13.9--22.7%.
At the opening that I attended Wednesday, buttons were available that identified the exhibit and suggested something to do to build a better future, such as "Act," "Share," "Listen," and "Hope." I chose one that said "Educate." That's what this show does.
Last July, at a Newark 1967 memorial march, I asked Mayor Cory Booker why it was important to recover this history. He answered that Newarkers need to grasp that their city was devastated not by random acts, but by real forces of racism, deindustrialization, corruption, and police brutality. Armed with that understanding he said, people can summon up the knowledge and energy to reclaim their city.
For me, that's a good answer.
And if you want to understand the place of 1967 in Newark's history, What's Going On? is a very good place to start. The show is scheduled to be open at least until December 2008.
The exhibit, mounted at the Society's building in Newark, puts the fortieth anniversary of Newark's disorders in a broad historical context. The show illuminates both Newark's descent into violence and its struggles for recovery.
The show takes the shape of an elongated horseshoe. You enter at a digital timeline, complete with visuals and audio, that sketches out the story of Newark from the 1920s to 2006. Illuminating everything from Pearl Harbor to Cory Booker's election, the timeline can seem fast and busy. Nevertheless, it gives you a basic orientation to what you are about to see.
You move counterclockwise through the exhibit. The opening section addresses Black migration to Newark, neighborhood life, and work.
The show gains depth and momentum as it introduces the voices of Newarkers, which you hear through headphones, relating their experiences in the city. More information setting these people in context--their pictures, their biographies--would have helped. Still, their words invigorate the exhibit.
The racial discrimination, deindustrialization, political corruption, ill-conceived urban renewal schemes, and police brutality that ravaged Newark are all covered in detail. So is the activism that tried to right these wrongs. In this exhibit Newark was, in the words of a Life Magazine headline, a "predictable insurrection."
The 26 deaths of that summer, as I noticed at a memorial service in July, are still deeply felt in Newark. Another audio-visual wall, this one mounted more than halfway through the show, identifies the slain, where they were killed, and situates their deaths in the flow of the upheaval.
What's Going On? tells a story with strong resonance for African Americans, but the exhibit includes other perspectives as well.
For me, the most moving section of the show was a display with three elements: a flag that covered the coffin of Newark Police Detective Frederick Toto, who was shot to death with a .22 round during the disorders; bullets and casings found in a ninth floor apartment of the Hayes Homes projects that strongly suggest the presence of a sniper there; and a painting of Eloise Spellman, who lived in the Hayes Homes one floor above the apartment where the bullets were found. Mrs. Spellman, who was shot in the neck while inside her home, bled to death while waiting for an ambulance.
Acknowledging these two deaths in this way doesn't necessarily heal the pain of the survivors, but it does enable us to contemplate, in one frame, their griefs and losses. In a segregated and polarized country, in a city where the decision to call 1967 a riot or a rebellion still sparks debate, that's progress.
"What's Going On" concludes with Newark's struggles to recover. While there are grounds for optimism, there is still much work to be done. One portion of the exhibit charts Newark's changing unemployment rate in the civilian workforce: in 1960, 8.2%; in 1970, 6.5%; and in 2004, 13.9--22.7%.
At the opening that I attended Wednesday, buttons were available that identified the exhibit and suggested something to do to build a better future, such as "Act," "Share," "Listen," and "Hope." I chose one that said "Educate." That's what this show does.
Last July, at a Newark 1967 memorial march, I asked Mayor Cory Booker why it was important to recover this history. He answered that Newarkers need to grasp that their city was devastated not by random acts, but by real forces of racism, deindustrialization, corruption, and police brutality. Armed with that understanding he said, people can summon up the knowledge and energy to reclaim their city.
For me, that's a good answer.
And if you want to understand the place of 1967 in Newark's history, What's Going On? is a very good place to start. The show is scheduled to be open at least until December 2008.
West Side Story, Fifty Years On
Fifty years ago this week, the musical West Side Story opened on Broadway. Marya Mannes, an American journalist writing for the BBC’s Listener, opened a piece on the play with the comment that “the people of this great city are turning dark while the buildings are turning light—a complete reversal of values from the days when I was a child and New York was a town of white faces and brown buildings.” Then, as now, racial and ethnic differences and conflicts are central to the fascination of the play. But it hasn't always been easy to recognize that or talk about it.
When West Side Story opened, some Puerto Ricans complained that play stereotyped them as criminals and mocked them in songs like "America." At the same time, New York critics recognized the animosities of the Jets and the Sharks but tended to see them as "juvenile delinquents"--teenage hoodlums who represented a deviant youth culture, not shock troops of ethnic conflict in a changing city.
There was plenty of racial and ethnic conflict in New York City during the summer of 1957, but people didn't always find it easy to identify it.
Indeed, in the summer just before West Side Story opened, a white youth from Washington Heights, Michael Farmer, was killed by a mostly Black and Hispanic gang. The nub of the matter was that a mostly Irish gang, the Jesters, saw it as their job to keep mostly Black and Hispanic gangs, the Dragons and Egyptian Kings, out of the pool. The conflict culminated in the slaying of Farmer, who may or may not have been a Jester.
But coverage of the story in the metropolitan press, courtroom procedures in the trial that followed, and a deliberately low-key response by Democratic Mayor Robert Wagner muted discussions of racial and ethnic conflict in the city. People emphasized the "crazy kids," and not the larger structures of power and prejudice that motivated them.
In this climate, West Side Story raised subjects--ethnic conflict, juvenile delinquency, and murder--that New Yorkers preferred to avoid: they clashed with the image of a liberal city that could solve all its problems. Still, the play is imperfect. The accents in "America" still make me cringe, and the paucity of well-rounded depictions of Puerto Ricans in the popular culture of the Fifties made the Sharks loom large in unfair and distorting ways. Nevertheless, as Frances Negron-Muntaner noted in her book Boricua Pop, the play still draws people in--Puerto Ricans included.
Fifty years old, West Side Story gives us glorious dance and song--and more. Drawing on the Thirties tradition of socially conscious plays, alive to the issues of the Fifties, and committed to the musical as an art form that was both brilliant and popular, Leonard Bernstein and his collaborators created a work of enduring power.
Partly that's because the play recognizes an issue that is still part of of our time: ethnic conflict. More important, it looks at ethnic conflict in a spirit that we still need: a belief that a great work of theater can help us understand the tragedy of hate and move us toward making a better world. 9/27/07
When West Side Story opened, some Puerto Ricans complained that play stereotyped them as criminals and mocked them in songs like "America." At the same time, New York critics recognized the animosities of the Jets and the Sharks but tended to see them as "juvenile delinquents"--teenage hoodlums who represented a deviant youth culture, not shock troops of ethnic conflict in a changing city.
There was plenty of racial and ethnic conflict in New York City during the summer of 1957, but people didn't always find it easy to identify it.
Indeed, in the summer just before West Side Story opened, a white youth from Washington Heights, Michael Farmer, was killed by a mostly Black and Hispanic gang. The nub of the matter was that a mostly Irish gang, the Jesters, saw it as their job to keep mostly Black and Hispanic gangs, the Dragons and Egyptian Kings, out of the pool. The conflict culminated in the slaying of Farmer, who may or may not have been a Jester.
But coverage of the story in the metropolitan press, courtroom procedures in the trial that followed, and a deliberately low-key response by Democratic Mayor Robert Wagner muted discussions of racial and ethnic conflict in the city. People emphasized the "crazy kids," and not the larger structures of power and prejudice that motivated them.
In this climate, West Side Story raised subjects--ethnic conflict, juvenile delinquency, and murder--that New Yorkers preferred to avoid: they clashed with the image of a liberal city that could solve all its problems. Still, the play is imperfect. The accents in "America" still make me cringe, and the paucity of well-rounded depictions of Puerto Ricans in the popular culture of the Fifties made the Sharks loom large in unfair and distorting ways. Nevertheless, as Frances Negron-Muntaner noted in her book Boricua Pop, the play still draws people in--Puerto Ricans included.
Fifty years old, West Side Story gives us glorious dance and song--and more. Drawing on the Thirties tradition of socially conscious plays, alive to the issues of the Fifties, and committed to the musical as an art form that was both brilliant and popular, Leonard Bernstein and his collaborators created a work of enduring power.
Partly that's because the play recognizes an issue that is still part of of our time: ethnic conflict. More important, it looks at ethnic conflict in a spirit that we still need: a belief that a great work of theater can help us understand the tragedy of hate and move us toward making a better world. 9/27/07
The Press, Ahmadinejad, and Freedom of Speech
In the New York City press, editorial reactions to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's appearance at Columbia University were mixed. To the Post, the entire exercise was a "Lesson in Absurdity" with no big First Amendment implications. To the Daily News, Columbia was "damnably wrong." And while the Sun thought President Lee Bollinger of Columbia did "pretty darned well" in his confrontation with Ahmadinejad, it still held that "it may have been a mistake" to invite the president of Iran to the campus.
Only the Times and Newsday defended Columbia on the grounds of freedom of speech and the right of universities to conduct inquiry, dialogue and debate as they see fit. By my count, that makes the city's press a shaky bulwark of support for the First Amendment.
But take heart. A Daily News Web poll asked, "Should Columbia University have invited Ahmadinejad to speak on campus?" Look at the answers.
Yes: 1,191 (57%)
No: 912 (43%)
Web polls are notoriously unscientific and should always be taken with a grain of salt.
But this one suggests that the people who answer such polls are better guardians of the First Amendment than many of the men and women who inhabit the editorial boards of the New York City press. 9/25/07
Only the Times and Newsday defended Columbia on the grounds of freedom of speech and the right of universities to conduct inquiry, dialogue and debate as they see fit. By my count, that makes the city's press a shaky bulwark of support for the First Amendment.
But take heart. A Daily News Web poll asked, "Should Columbia University have invited Ahmadinejad to speak on campus?" Look at the answers.
Yes: 1,191 (57%)
No: 912 (43%)
Web polls are notoriously unscientific and should always be taken with a grain of salt.
But this one suggests that the people who answer such polls are better guardians of the First Amendment than many of the men and women who inhabit the editorial boards of the New York City press. 9/25/07
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