A New Year - A New Mayor

   An era ended two weeks ago for New York City.  Twenty years of Republican mayors are over and for the first time in a long time this city, where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans four to one, is being governed by a Democrat, a Democrat for whom I voted with much hope and confidence.  When I vote for Republicans, which I do more often than I’d like, I vote for them with a heavy heart, knowing that if they win I and other liberals (there, I just said the L-word) would have to watch them like a hawk.  We are coming off eight years of Rudy Giuliani and twelve of Michael Bloomberg.  Their record is mixed, but far more positive than I would have expected from Republicans.  Giuliani entered City Hall with a city awash in crime and a deteriorating infrastructure whose middle class tax base was leaving in droves.  We all were resigned to double locking our doors, driving our cars in summer with windows locked and gas-guzzling air conditioners at full blast, and not letting our children out of our sight in a city which we simply assumed was ungovernable.  After Mayor Giuliani’s first term the city had done an about face.  Crime rates were the lowest in memory, children played outside, and we still double locked our doors but more from force of habit than fear of actual danger.  The city was never ungovernable; it was merely ungoverned for too darn long.  Giuliani appointed several get-tough police commissioners and a novel “broken windows theory” of policing; sweat the small stuff and you don’t get the big stuff.  Arrest petty vandals, grafitti “artists,” turnstile jumpers and such and they don’t graduate to armed robbery, rape and murder.  At the first sign of any trouble in Crown Heights, which suffered a terrible pogrom a year and a half before Giuliani took office,  a phalanx of riot-equipped police with a mobile command post and the whole nine yards descended on the neighborhood and did not leave until the trouble was over.  Cynical New Yorkers pooh-poohed the new policies but they worked.  Serious felonies took a nose dive and there were no Crown Heights riots in Crown Heights or anyplace else.  The City became a safe place to live and work, the exodus to the suburbs ended and people who had fled actually started coming back; there is little to recommend a long automobile commute on snowy highways and with gasoline prices sky high.  Freshly minted energetic and creative college grads flocked to New York and reinvigorated deteriorating neighborhoods like North Williamsburg, the Lower East Side and even Harlem.

 

   Giuliani’s second term brought still more reduction in crime, but there were stirrings of too much of a good thing.  Law-abiding people were being gratuitously harassed by the police, some of whom seemed to actually enjoy harassing them.  Being a teacher in an inner-city school, I would overhear the horror stories of students and teachers of color about being randomly stopped by cops and asked for ID (which no American civilian is required to carry), thrown up against a wall, invasively searched without a warrant, and the like.  Certain neighborhoods in the City were turning into a police state and affluent New Yorkers who held the power didn’t seem to care.  You did not even have to be black to be harassed by Giuliani’s cops; it happened to me.  I was attending teachers’ meetings in a high school in Bensonhurst, and was running north at lunch time to a kosher Dunkin Donuts to grab a bite when I was stopped by two people.  They asked me what I was doing in the neighborhood.  Being Jewish I answered their question with another question: What’s it of your business?  They showed me shields that identified them as police and resumed their intrusive questioning.  When I told them that I was in the neighborhood for teachers’ meetings at the high school, they told me the schools were closed for Election Day.  I replied that the schools are closed for students, but teachers have meetings and they can check that with the Board (now the Department) of Education.  What do you know about drug dealing over there (pointing south toward Coney Island)?  I don’t know what you’re talking about.  Why are you running?  I like to run.  They looked at me like I was crazy.  Never mind that I was wearing a baseball cap emblazoned on both sides with “New York City Marathon” and it was the week before the Marathon.  What freaking planet were those guys on?  They asked me for ID and I gave them my driver’s license.  What’s your address?  I told them.  That’s not the address on your license.  I recently moved; that was my old address and I filed the required form with the Department of Motor Vehicles.  One of them took the license into his car and ran it through the computer; of course it checked out fine.  Then one of them told me to open my mouth, and when I did so he swept the inside of my mouth with his finger (I don’t remember if he was wearing a rubber finger cot or rubber gloves), “checking for drugs.”  Of course he didn’t find a thing.  Only then did they let me go my way.  Several years later I recounted my experience to a lawyer acquaintance who told me that if the statute of limitations had not run out he would advise me to hire a lawyer and sue the city and the police department, as I had been subjected to an illegal and invasive search.

 

  Then came Michael Bloomberg, a billionaire Manhattanite aloof from New Yorkers in the outer boroughs who actually had to work for a living.  Never having had to deal with unions in his businesses where he made his billions, he made an art form out of demonizing the city’s unions and not bargaining with them in good faith, when he bargained at all.  At the end of his tenure he deliberately forced the unions into time-consuming and unwieldy impasse procedures so as to “kick the can” to the next mayor.

 

   This analysis would not be complete without mentioning a sea change in quality of life in New York’s public places, besides the dramatic reduction in crime.  A city that was choked with pollution from automobiles now encourages people to ride bicycles, both for fun and to travel to and from work.  Bike lanes and even bike rental stations are now a common sight.  Herald Square and other heavily trafficked public places now have protected areas where pedestrians can sit down and enjoy a snack and unrushed conversation, weather permitting.  We no longer have to inhale poisonous cigarette smoke as a condition of holding a job, shopping for groceries, waiting on line in a bank or being in any other indoor public space.  Prospect and Central Parks are free of automobile traffic much of the time; Transportation Alternatives is trying to make that all of the time.  Organized running and bicycle races are now common in those and other parks on weekends and summer weekday evenings.  Children and adults now enjoy the parks without having to inhale automobile exhaust and dodge speeding automobile traffic.  New Yorkers resisted all of these improvements at first, but eventually got used to them and even began to like them.  

 

   After 20 years with the same party in power, Americans usually vote for change.  So it was in New York, as Democrat Bill de Blasio was sworn in January 1.  He lived in Brooklyn (as mayor, he will live in Gracie Mansion) and has a son attending prestigious – and public – Brooklyn Technical High School, “Brooklyn Tech” to New Yorkers.  Like most Democratic public officials in New York, he is union friendly.  He can be expected to drive a hard bargain, but he will bargain in good faith.  Perhaps the greatest change we can expect to see – and soon – will be in the quality of policing.  One of the major issues in de Blasio’s election campaign was Bloomberg’s “stop and frisk” policy, whereby police could detain anybody they deemed suspicious and frisk him for weapons.  Very few weapons were found or arrests made, but very much distrust and animosity was created between the police and the people they are supposed to protect and serve.  In theory the police had to have “reasonable suspicion” (a lesser standard than the “probable cause” required to obtain a search warrant) to perform a stop and frisk.  In practice “reasonable suspicion” could mean that the cop didn’t like the way somebody looks, the way he is dressed, or that he walks with a swagger (they should have seen me in the summer of 1967; I walked with the granddaddy of all swaggers).  In other words, breathing while black was enough to get you stopped and frisked in majority-black neighborhoods.  The new mayor pledged to end all that, and we have the technology to do so without sending crime rates into the stratosphere.  Policemen can be outfitted with cameras on their uniforms (the courts have held that there is no right to privacy on a public street) that can show a suspicious bulge in somebody’s pocket, gang signs or colors and similar bases for reasonable suspicion.  Another likely change will be “community policing,” whereby cops are taken out of their patrol cars and put on their feet, getting to know the area and its people, who the troublemakers are, who bears watching and so forth.  It works in most places where it was tried.  I don’t place much credence in fears of a return to the crime-ridden 1970s and ‘80s; New Yorkers simply won’t allow it.  For example, before Mayor Giuliani took office, “squeegee men” would hang out at key intersections offering to wash motorists’ windshields for a fee and harassing them if they declined.  Giuliani cleared them out.  During Bloomberg’s administration they tried to make a comeback.  The news made headlines in the tabloids, and the next day the squeegee men were gone.  We like our safe, people-friendly city and no official who values his political hide will allow a return to the bad old days.

 

תכלה שנה וקללותיה.  תחל שנה וברכותיה.

May the old year with its curses end, and a new year with its blessings begin.

 

Snowbound - Don't mess with Mother Nature

On Sunday night, December 26, a monster snowstorm barreled into New York City. By the time the snow stopped falling about noon Monday, better than two feet of snow was on the ground in some places. High winds continued to cause blowing and drifting until this morning (Tuesday). Shoveling was a Sisyphean task; as soon as one shoveled, fresh or blowing snow obliterated the work. Many homeowners just didn't bother shoveling until late yesterday or today. I was not one of them; I had cleared a path on my stretch of sidewalk Monday morning, and spread calcium chloride on the pavement. My wife could not go to work yesterday because the streets were treacherous when not downright impassable; two broken ankles are enough, thank you very much.



But the point of this post is to show how people made the effects of the storm far worse than they had to be. In Yiddish there is a word "knacker," (both k's pronounced) which has been translated as "big shot," but more often is used sarcastically to describe a person who thinks he's a big shot but he's really a stupid fool. We all knew a day in advance that the storm was coming. The Mayor advised people to keep their cars off the roads. In a storm of this magnitude, most private cars without four wheel drive, and even some with, are likely to get stuck in the snow and block snowplows from removing the snow and making the road minimally navigable. They also block ambulances and fire trucks, with sometimes fatal consequences. Did New Yorkers heed the advice? Too many did not. For instance, my side street had two private cars stuck in the snow, one traveling the wrong way up the one-way street. Knackers. Snowplows couldn't get through; luckily, to the best of my knowledge, nobody needed an ambulance and fire engines did not need to pass. We have a terrific Hatzalah here in Midwood, but even the best Hatzalah people cannot make their ambulances fly over a car that's blocking the street. And even a mild snowstorm presents the danger of unfit people having heart attacks shoveling snow. The drivers of those cars abandoned their vehicles; anyone stranded in a car in this weather is in danger of hypothermia. The cars remained on my street for hours until they could be towed away.

Scenes like this were common; knackers who thought they
were bigger than nature made life miserable for many others.

As if individual wiseguys with total disregard for the common good weren't bad enough, the city was inexcusably caught off guard. Again, we all had advance warning that this storm was on the way. That should have given all concerned ample time to prepare. For individuals this means assuming the worst. Roads will be impassable, stores will not be getting deliveries even if they can open, so stock up on food for several days. Bring everything that can blow around and cause damage indoors (cf. Ex. 9:19 in this week's parsha). Make sure you have sufficient supplies of salt (calcium chloride is more expensive than sodium chloride but it won't harm concrete) and snow shovels. If you are too ill or out of shape to shovel snow, arrange for someone else to do it; here's in opportunity for yeshiva students to earn hesed credit. Then hunker down. Don't be a knacker. Unless you are performing an essential service (police, fire, Hatzalah, etc) do not try to get to work. You will only make a bad situation worse - much worse - for yourself and others. Health care facilities that must be staffed need to make arrangements for skeleton crews to sleep in the facility the night before, so they will be at work when needed. For the City, it means be prepared. The Mayor should have declared a state of emergency and banned private vehicles from the road rather than relying on individuals to be civic-minded and stay home. The threat of hefty fines should deter most of the knackers. Snowplows, salt spreaders and their crews needed to be ready to clear the roads and the subway tracks. Elevated trains cannot run if the snow is deep enough to cover the third rail, and this time it was more than deep enough. One train was stranded for several hours in sight of a station. Without power the heat failed and riders shivered in the cold; luckily nobody became seriously hypothermic. The Brighton line (B and Q) that serves my neighborhood is completely out of service - Astoria to Coney Island - as of this writing! That means that people who might be able to get to work by train were unable to do so and were tempted to drive.

This storm was unusual but hardly unprecedented. People of a certain age remember snowfalls of two feet or more that crippled the city - for a day at most. Preparedness is the key. So is recognizing that nobody is bigger than Mother Nature. Don't be a knacker. If nature says don't drive, don't drive. We just have to live with the fact that we can't always get around in December as if it was May (those who plan weddings in wintertime - hint, hint). And the authorities must rein in the knackers and take the political fallout; that's what we elected them for. And don't hide behind "no money" either. Recession or not, we depend on government to provide essential services. Private cars blocked buses and ambulances, but they did not block trains. Failure to clear the elevated tracks is entirely the fault of the city and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and our elected officials must be held to account. And oh yes, get yourselves in shape so you can shovel your own snow next year.

Scientists are telling us that heavy snowfalls (we had several last year too, but not as bad) will be more frequent, ironically, due to the planet warming up. Warm air holds more moisture than cold, so when a moisture-laden air mass travels north and cools below the freezing point, it dumps its water as snow. What we had yesterday may well be the shape of things to come. As the Boy Scouts say, be prepared.

Defining Deviancy Down and Segregated Buses

A while ago I posted a piece decrying the diminution in standards of English spelling, grammar and usage in written material intended for public consumption. A piece dramatically illustrating this appeared in a Jewish-oriented magazine that made its way to my door recently. That it also appears to excuse if not outright justify gender segregation on public buses compounds the embarrassment. That glaring errors escaped both the author and her editors adds tragedy to embarrassment - and hillul Hashem if the piece found its way to non-Jews. Here is the essay: read it and weep.


Here are the errors that I caught in a cursory reading, and I am not a professional copy editor:

1. "When To Use common Sense And Derech Eretz." If every other word in the title was capitalized, "common" should also have been capitalized.
2. "Once, after I paid my fair and took a seat,. . . ." Try, "paid my fare. . ."
3. "Only me and the driver. . . " should be "Only I and the driver. . ." The first person pronoun is the subject of the sentence. An English speaker might get away with this in informal conversation, but not in writing for publication.
4. "He asked me. . . if I would possibly, in a very polite manner, move to the back of the van. . . " As the sentence is structured, the author was asked to be polite as she moved to the back. I suspect that the author meant to say that the man, whom she had previously characterized as well spoken, asked politely. She should have written, "he asked me in a very polite manner to move to the back."
5. "I have no idea why this man would have the nerve to ask. . .an older American woman to the back of the bus. . ." A verb would add clarity - ". . .to move to the back of the bus."
6. "For those of you whom have traveled. . . . " Again, we have subject-object confusion. She should have written, "for those of you who have traveled." It is common to see this transposition the other way around; who instead of whom. Perhaps in thirty years the object pronoun whom will have become obsolete (yes, language is an evolving entity), but it is highly unlikely that "whom" will replace "who."
7. ". . .who were asked too many times to please leave there seats . . . . " It's "leave their seats." Please.

There are other instances of awkward sentence structure that make it difficult to decipher the author's point. All of this appeared both in the written article and in the online version.

To my chagrin, deviancy has been defined down not only in the finer points of English but in the substance of the article. What has been unacceptable - and illegal - for some fifty years is becoming the accepted norm. The controversy over segregated buses has been going on in our community for several years, and whenever I read about it my mind conjures up one name: Rosa Parks. A black woman, she boarded a bus in Alabama in the 1950s and sat in the front. The driver asked her to move to the back, as the law then required, so a white person could sit in the front. She courageously refused, sparking the bus boycott led by Martin Luther King. The rest is history. For over 50 years, buses in America may not discriminate on the basis of race and other "protected classes" including sex. I read postings on other blogs by attorneys to the effect that sex discrimination on public buses is "illegal, period." Neither tzniut (sexual modesty) nor any other consideration justifies it. It might pass in a private vehicle taking people from Point A to Point B, but certainly not in a bus that stops on public streets to pick up and discharge fare-paying members of the public. And if the bus is engaged in interstate commerce, for instance a bus traveling from Brooklyn to Monsey by way of New Jersey, sex discrimination becomes a federal offense. Israel is a different case, since it is not subject to American jurisdiction. However, American immigrants bring American values, including basic equality and human rights, that preclude women being beaten or spat upon when they refuse to move to the back of the bus. This has happened more than once, at the hands of supposedly "religious" men.
The author says she has no idea why that man asked her to move to the back of the bus. I submit that he took the author for a pushover, and unfortunately he was right. Stop making excuses for behavior that, like tearing pages out of biology books, is onerous and odious. We need Jewish Rosa Parkses to look such men straight in the eye and refuse to move. If the driver or others attempt to enforce illegal segregation, the women must be adamant in their refusal and then file the appropriate complaints with the New York City Human Rights Commission and the equivalents in other jurisdictions. It is 2010, not 1950. Get with the program.

Doomsday Canceled

Doomsday they called it. The day the New York City Transit Authority (NYCTA), bedeviled by a large budget shortfall due to the recession, was set to impose draconian fare raises and service cuts. Back to the 1970s and 80s, when service was spotty, derailments and breakdowns were the order of the day and riders deserted the system - and the city - in droves. Was there no institutional memory at City Hall and Albany? Albany, because NYCTA had long since been made a subsidiary of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA, no relation to the yeshiva), a state agency, in response to a previous budget crisis. The city, especially working stiffs like us, the majority of New Yorkers who do not own cars, was gripped with a sense of impending woe. The fat-cat bureaucrats, who more likely get to work in chauffeured limousines than on the subway, were determined to seal New York's doom for a generation. Against them were arrayed the poor shnooks: the Working Families Party, the Straphangers Campaign, Transportation Alternatives, and similar ragtag advocacy groups. The odds seemed insurmountable, but we triumphed over insurmountable odds before; was it not the month of Iyar? The Internet is free, and emails soon went out to us ordinary folks with phone numbers to call, addresses for email and snail mail, rallies to attend in New York and Albany. My state senator, Carl Kruger, was among the "Fab Six" who were blocking legislation in Albany that would rescue the MTA. The rescue, as nobody tried to hide, would have been at the expense of automobile drivers. Automobiles carrying only their drivers are the least efficient and most environmentally irresponsible way of commuting to work, and making driving a bit more expensive would accomplish a social good transcending the Robin Hood strategy. But - automobile drivers are more likely than subway commuters to have scads of campaign cash. Carl Kruger is a good senator with a strong record of cutting red tape for ordinary Brooklynites. He is also too smart a man not to know on which side his bread is buttered. There are more public transportation riders than automobile commuters in his district, as there are in the City as a whole. And so it was not without some trepidation that I placed a phone call to his office. I got a staffer, and told her that if doomsday happens because Senator Kruger blocked the relief bill, I would hold him accountable at the polls and so would many like me in the district. I also called the office of Congressman Anthony Wiener, whose staffer tried to cut me off by referring me to the state politicians. I reminded her that the federal government has a bottomless pool of bailout money for banks and bankers, and it was time for them to bail out ordinary people. She promised me to relay my views to Mr. Wiener. I don't know if she ever did, but federal assistance proved unnecessary. At the last minute Albany came through. We had exerted enough pressure on the fat cats to make them see that we may not have loads of money but we do vote, and our votes are not for sale. We are aware, we are involved, and we will not take abuse silently. The bailout provides for a reasonable fare increase that will not take effect until June 28. We are by no means out of the woods; the relief is a two-year stopgap and we still need a "Joseph strategy" to save money in good times for bad. But New York has a shot at remaining the greatest city on earth. And we learned again what one of my teachers at Yeshivah of Flatbush taught us: l'olam lo l'hitya'esh. Never give up. If you give up on something you lose it even if it's found. You can fight City Hall. And you can win.