Voting: A Right or A Privilege?

A poll tax receipt from Arkansas, 1893

A literacy test for voting from Louisiana

A petition for the right of women to vote in Texas from Minnie Fisher Cunningham, 1916

The central issue in American history remains, exactly who is included in those opening 3 words of the Constitution, "We the People ...?

Magazine Covers and Developing Stories

The hurricane continues to be an unfolding story here.  I have friends in New Jersey who are facing their 6th day without power and light.  I saw long lines -- and I mean long lines out of sight -- of cars waiting to buy gas on Jerome Avenue in the Bronx yesterday, on McGuiness Boulevard in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and right outside our building on Meeker Boulevard next to the Brooklyn Queens Expressway.  The line in front of our house is still there, and was there all night.  I heard fights break out in the line at 5AM.
As the days go by, the damage gets bigger and bigger.  A friend of mine from Bay Ridge in Brooklyn down by the Verazanno Bridge writes that most of the sea wall there was destroyed along with the board walk.  There was much more damage on the west side of Manhattan than was previously reported.  The Hudson river flooded much of the west side of Greenwich Village.  The devastation out in Staten Island and in the Rockaways gets worse and worse with each inspection.  Most of those areas are still without power, and shut-ins in the high rise housing projects out in Far Rockaway have been trapped in their apartments without light, heat, or running water for days.
The situation on the Jersey Coast gets worse and worse with each passing day.  The damage was even worse than the first reports; sea walls, boardwalks, hotels, houses, amusement parks, all destroyed by the storm surge and washed out to sea.

I was glad that the Marathon was canceled for Sunday November 4th, but I think our petulant mayor could have postponed the run rather than cancel it altogether.  The problem with the Marathon was not the race itself, but the timing.  Diverting so much public resources to the race at a time when people are still digging out was bound to provoke deep and widespread resentment.  Moving the date back another 2 or 3 weeks I think would have been the better option.

This story definitely is not over yet.

Hooray!!!

The lights are coming back on in Manhattan!!!

Joseph Stella, Battle of Lights, Coney Island, 1914

Climate Change

A scene from the 2001 movie, A.I. Artificial Intelligence

 Climate change is suddenly on everyone's mind here in New York after the wallop packed by Sandy.

 Wen Stephenson recently wrote an angry and polemical article taking journalists to task for their silence on climate change.  It is bad enough that politicians are silent on what may well be historically the most important issue of our day.  It is far worse that journalists do not even ask them about it.

This issue has been around for a long time, at least since Bill McKibben's book The End of Nature first appeared in the The New Yorker in 1989.  As Stephenson points out, scientists have known about the warming effects of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere since the 19th century.  They've always known that the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere has multiplied exponentially since the Industrial Revolution.  The consensus of scientists is that climate change is happening, and that it has at least in part a human cause. 

Mountain glaciers around the world have been in retreat since 1850, and may disappear entirely by the middle of this century.  Polar ice caps are shrinking at an alarming rate.  Sea levels are rising, and the supply of drinking water around the world may soon be affected.

Environmental issues and social justice issues are more closely bound together than we might assume.  It is no accident that the county with the highest rates of asthma in the USA, the Bronx in New York, is among the poorest.  It is no coincidence that the Bronx has a very high level of pollution.  Like many poor counties, the Bronx is a place to dump toxic refuse because the residents are in no position to do anything about it.
Climate change will only heighten the widening contrast between those who may and those who must in coming decades.

Despite a shrinking group of shrill deniers, these are realities that governments are already having to face.  Rising sea levels are a clear and present issue for port cities around the world, including New York City.  How to go about protecting cities and port facilities from ever higher tides and storm surges?  Some island nations like the Maldives and Kiribati are in danger of disappearing beneath the waves altogether.  The resource that people may well be killing each other over in future decades is not oil, but potable drinking water.

The increasing frequency and severity of "storms of the century" should give us pause to consider that the writing is on the wall for the internal combustion engine, fossil fuels, and the culture built around them.  We may be at one of those turning points where the Dutch beat out the Spanish navy in the 17th century with superior and more mobile ship technology; where the Dutch in turn were beat out by the British and steam technology.  The internal combustion engine may soon become as quaint as the windmill.

As was so forcefully demonstrated this past week, technology always has a trade off.  The price for greater ability is usually greater vulnerability.



RELATED:

It's remarkable how large a roll weather plays in the history of cities.  For example, the aftermath of the great blizzard of 1888 in New York...

Downed power lines

Stalled trolleys and trains

These structural failures under the stress of 40 to 50 inches of snow with 40 mile an hour wind gusts paralyzed the city for days.  After this disaster, city planners made two momentous decisions:  to put all the electrical cables underground, and to put the trains underground as well.  New York's famous subterranean utility grid, and its subways, came out of the 1888 blizzard, the "White Hurricane."

Sandy is arguably just such a city-altering weather event.  We shall see what changes to the city emerge.  People are already talking about sea barricades like the Thames Barrier in London, or similar barriers in Rotterdam and Japan.

Staten Island

 Staten is the borough of New York I know least.  In 20 years of living here, I've been through it maybe twice, in the back of a car heading from Brooklyn to New Jersey, and I didn't exactly stop to look around.  I've never once ridden the Staten Island Ferry.

Staten Island has always been a place apart in New York City.  It is the smallest borough in terms of population (but still bigger than Washington DC, Boston, or Miami).  Politically, it is usually the most conservative of the 5 Boroughs, though it's a nest of heathen lefties by Texas standards.  It used to be known as the "Cops and Robbers" Borough because so many NYPD cops lived out there next door to guys employed by the Mafia (sometimes the two groups were in the same family).  There are affluent suburban neighborhoods on the island, not so affluent working class neighborhoods, housing projects, and even some farms.  The southern part of the island is still very rural.

As the sun rises on New York City after Sandy, it turns out that the borough that took the biggest hit was Richmond, aka Staten Island.  At the moment, the official death toll city wide is 37.  Staten Island accounts for 19 of those dead.  The Island was completely unprepared for the unprecedented storm surge that swept through it, demolishing houses or sweeping them off of their foundations.

Usually residents of Staten Island are content to be ignored, but not now.  Spare a little thought and prayer for the Island and give generously to the Red Cross.

Dark Manhattan

Michael and I walked down to the river front park in Williamsburg to see what we could see.  I took my trusty little digital camera, and here is what we saw.

The contrast between darkened Lower Manhattan and the rest of the city was stark.

On the right is Lower Manhattan, on the left is downtown Brooklyn

Tonight, the World Trade Center was all lit up again; last night it was dark as everything else.  No one lives there.  Hundreds of thousands of people live in the darkened buildings in the foreground.

The Manhattan tower of the Williamsburg Bridge as dark as the neighborhood behind it

The Williamsburg Bridge; half of it has power, the other half is in the dark.

The East Village in darkness; against the sunset, you can see the tower of Redeemer Catholic Church on East 3rd Street.

In a delicious bit of irony, the ConEd building on East 14th Street is in the dark.  Only its clock and top are lit, I presume by batteries.

The 14th Street Power Station; this is the one that had the explosion.  Some of the lights are back on at the station.  Last night, it was totally dark except for the construction lights you see on the left foreground.

The line between who has light and who does not is a sharp one, right at 31st Street.  In the foreground are riverfront apartment towers that are completely dark and without power.  Behind are the brightly lit towers of Midtown, including the Chrysler Building.

The Empire State Building lit up for the holiday

The Upper East Side up to the 59th Street Bridge all lit up as is normal for all of Manhattan

Michael in front of the Williamsburg Bridge

Yours Truly with the Upper East Side and Midtown behind


This is the third day of the Hurricane Sandy blackout going into a 4th.  This is a major hardship for thousands of people, but especially for elderly shut-ins in the housing projects on the Lower East Side.  Not only are all the lights out (it gets pitch dark in the hallways of these buildings, I speak from experience), but the elevators are out, and in buildings over 6 floors, there is no running water, no toilets.  Tall buildings require pumps to move water through the plumbing, and when the electricity goes out, so do the pumps.
Food is starting to become a major problem in Lower Manhattan.  There is no refrigeration and no deliveries.  All but the hardiest delis and bodegas are closed.  Those few that are open don't have much to sell and are only taking cash.  Restaurants and diners are closed.  Most perishable food has spoiled by now.  So, there are now large efforts, both public and private, to get food and fresh drinking water into Lower Manhattan.

I have a lot of friends who live in Lower Manhattan, and I'm slowly hearing from all of them.  Some have left to stay with friends and relatives for the duration.  Others are staying, and are determined to tough it out.  So far as I know, there has been no looting in Manhattan, though blacked out Coney Island suffered some looting.  People are looking out for each other, especially for their elderly neighbors.

After this crisis, after the 2003 Blackout, and especially after September 11th, I agree more and more with Albert Camus' conclusion that ordinary people are better than the experts claim.  This most nakedly Social Darwinist of all cities ("New York, Where the Weak are Killed and Eaten" said a tee shirt I saw years ago) can really pull together in times of crisis. 

All Saints Day

They're all busy with disaster relief right now.