Part of what makes New York City fascinating -- but also sometimes tough to talk about and understand -- is that this "city" isn't really a city in the traddional sense. The Merriam-Webster and other dictionaries define a city simply as a "large or important municipality in the U.S. governed under a charter granted by the state."
That's it. And NYC certainly fits that definition.
But its size and geography and population make it unlike most other cities, both in the United States and the world at large. (This list gives 10 examples of the differences between NYC and just about every other city in the world.) As I've blogged about before, NYC isn't a single city -- its several cities joined up together.
And that's what makes NYC not a city but an empire -- dozens of islands containing several different cites and towns and villages and arable land stiched together to become a whole greater than the sum of its parts.
The size and scope and unwieldy nature of the five boroughs is so complex, so various, so wild and huge that the best way to understand NYC is not as a city but as an urban empire -- or, as the poet Emma Lazarus famously called it, a collossus.
Empires don't just spring to life out of nowhere, they are built over time. And here's the story of building the NYC empire -- past, present, and future:
If you watched the great Netflix show The Crown, about the late British Queen Elizabeth II, it was all about how a country's monarchy survives in a world where most countries are now republics.
For most of human history, most of the world lived under monarchies -- but the last hundred-plus years has seen a reversal with monarchies falling and republics surging (see the brilliant 1974 series Fall of Eagles for more about why this happened).
As a study of history and politics, I'm fascinated by the diference between monarchies and republics. In short, a monarchy is a country ruled by one person and his or her family while a republic is a country ruled by the people. Most revolutions throughout history have been of countries overthrowing their monarchies and becoming republics -- although sometimes, like in Ancient Rome or 19th century France, it goes the other way (more than once).
Today, of course, these things are much more complicated.
In the United Kingdom and some other counties, they have the concept of constitutional monarchies where the people elect a government but the monarch remains a powerless national figurehead. In some supposed republics, however, like North Korea or Russia, there is supposed rule by the people but really these countries are ruled by strongmen and their families -- these pseudo-republics being more authoritarian and monarchical than any real monarchy.
But what exists in both monarchies and republics are dynasties -- families that build wealth and power and then exercise it over the people.
In America, a republic, we have and have had many dynasties: the Adamses, Harrisons, Roosevelts, Kennedies, Tafts, Clintons and Bushes all reaching not only the presidency but other high offices (like Congressional and Senate seats plus Governorships). First they dominate their political parties, then their states, then the country.
Closer to home, we've had multiple New York Governors named Roosevelt and Cuomo (although, in NYC, we've had never had mayors of the same family). However, in super-local politics, we've had many dynasties in the state legislature and various city offices: the Boylans in Brooklyn, the Vallones in Queens, the Diazes in the Bronx, the Molinari's in Staten Island, and others.
Dynasties in NYC politics are as powerful as ever.
That's why I was interested to read about how the former Harlem Assemblyman Keith Wright's son Jordan is running for his old seat, seeking to continue a family's power in Harlem and state government. This is how dynasties are made.
Even though NYC is a democracy existing under the framework of state and federal law, it has its own charter divvying up power between the mayor and city council as well as the borough presidents, Comptroller and Public Advocate. And even though this city has multiple dynasties, NYC is not a some kind of 16-century Medici-like Italian city-state under dictatorial rule of one person or family. However, Mayor Adams has just appointed a charter commission charter commission to try to rein in the council's power and increase the mayor's (i.e. his) power. It's a cynical move to become less accountable (where else have we seen this?).
What's interesting to me about the perennial existance of dynasties in democracies, and of power-grabbing politicians like Adams (and other aspiring American tyrants who shall not be named), is that the concept of rule by the people with divided, limited powers, is and forever shall be a boulder being shoved up hill.
By their very nature, people are greedy and family-oriented, and they want to accumulate as much wealth and power as possible for themselves and, when they age or die out, want their families to retain it. That's why great dynasties like the Plantagenets in England or the Habsburgs in Austria or the Romanovs in Russia held power for centuries and were only overthrown through violence and war.
It doesn't matter what high ideals we may claim to have, whether we've had revolutions to get rids of monarches and establish republican rule -- the hunger for power by people and their families remains and overwhelms.
Imagine a politician who built his wealth in real estate, was a racist demagogue who supported the Confederacy, incited a riot, married and fathered multiple children with multiple women, tried to undermine democracy and the law to make himself a dictator, and used his executive public office to enrich himself ...
Born in Philadelphia in 1812, Wood migrated to NYC and worked as a laborer, got involved in Tammany Hall politics, and was eventually elected to Congress in 1840. After one term he left and got into real estate, accumulating a fortune but remaining involved in politics until he finally was elected mayor in 1854.
His administration was basically a giant shakedown and bribery operation but he did notch some significant achievements: rebuilding the city harbor, overseeing the approval and eventual creation of Central Park, and implementing the grid system. He also attempted to change the city charter to essentially make the city government the extension of one man – him – so he could act as a dictator. When he ran for re-election in 1856, he furloughed the police department and got a band of thugs to menace and beat up voters in order to get reelected. He was never prosecuted for this.
Defeated for a third-term, Wood eventually got elected mayor again in 1860 – just as the Civil War was breaking out. He supported slavery and the Confederacy, and called for NYC to secede from New York State so it could keep trading with the south.
So did Fernando Wood ever face public disgrace or jail for his corruption and crimes?
Oh no. In 1862, he returned to Congress and opposed abolition. And he remained in Congress, becoming chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, until he died in 1881, a very wealthy man with a mansion on West 77th Street.
He also had three wives and fathered 16 children. The man was forever busy.
Today we live in an era of aspiring dictators and corrupt chief executives with a love of racism and violence and money. So while history has not been kind to Fernando Wood's memory, in some ways, he'd be right at home in our era.
But he's been condemned, at least, by popular culture: see the 2012 Steven Spielberg movie Lincoln and listen to the 2011 Bowery Boys episode.
In many ways, Fernando Wood makes later NYC mayors Jimmy Walker and Eric Adams look like pillars of virtue.
Currently there is a swirl of buzz in the NYC media world about the corruption investigation into Mayor Eric Adams -- and whether or not it might lead to his resignation (including the idea that former Governor Andrew Cuomo might run to replace him, that'd be wild).
Now let's not get to hung up on the grammer of this headline ("No mayor" is singular, "they" is plural), and the article does a fine job explaining how the line of succession works per the city charter --- but the headline is just flat-out, historically wrong.
While a mayor, Jimmy Walker, did resign in 1932 another mayor also resigned in 1950 -- William O'Dwyer. I even did a blog post in 2019 about the special election of 1950. I even wrote a blog post about the mayor who was elected in that special election -- Vincent Impelliteri -- all the way back in 2007!
This November, while Americans will be going to the polls to -- hopefully! -- engineer a "blue wave", here in NYC something quiet by very important will also be on the ballot: we will voting on whether or not to revise the city charter.
There will be three amendments to be voted on: reducing campaign contribution limits to candidates for city office, creation of a new "civic engagement" commission, and term limits to community boards.
I plan to vote "yes" on all three amendments -- and encourage all New Yorkers to do the same. These seem like progressive, pro-active, and fair-minded reforms that will improve transparency and participation in the governance of NYC.
This week in NYC something important is happening below the radar: the city Charter Review Commission is holding public hearings to get input into how the NYC Charter -- basically, the city's very own constitution -- should be updated.
Until the end of the month, there will be hearings in each borough and you can find more info about them here.
Some of the issues to be discussed about revising the charter: improving community boards, making the campaign finance system even less donor-dependent, instant run-off voting in primaries, redistricting, and creating an office of civic engagement.
It's easy to get upset at the news these days, constantly shouting at the TV or Internet, feeling powerless. But here is an opportunity for all New Yorkers to actually do something about how they're governed, to give (and take) the power that regulates our lives.
P.S. This is not the first time I've blogged about the City Charter. In 2009 I did a short post and it got an interest reply.
Rolling Stone recently published a very long article about Mayor De Blasio and his progressive vision for NYC.
Elected in 2013 with 73% of the vote, Mayor De Blasio put the issues of economic inequality at the center of his campaign and governing strategy. So far, he has given NYC universal pre-K (which, as a parent, I love), paid sick leave, launched a municipal ID card, and unveiled plans for more affordable housing units. More controversially, he reduced the use of "stop-and-frisk" by the police but has largely maintained the "broken windows" policing that has kept crime low.
His agenda is mostly, to my mind, uncontroversial. Who can argue that parents don't need pre-K? That paid sick leave is a humane policy? That a municipal ID card that helps people access services is bad? And the need for more affordable housing? That last one answers itself.
These policy achievements might be viewed as "progressive" but, for me, they are just common sense improvements to the quality of life in NYC in the 21st century.
And yet, as successful as he's been (so far), and despite his huge mandate, De Blasio has faced vicious push back from the state government, the media, the wealthy, the so-called (corporate) charter school movement, and, naturally, Republicans. De Blasio wants to fight inequality and these various groups instead want to fight him. In fact, they are scorch-earthed in their hatred for him and his agenda, as this article explains. Just read some of the comments that accompany the article -- they are really, really nasty.
Clearly, instead of wanting to reduce inequality, these people want to preserve it. They don't really hate De Blasio -- they hate the people he represents (namely, the sick and disabled, the poor, minorities, Democrats, and basically anyone who isn't rich, white, and Republican). Really, what the De Blasio haters hate is democracy itself. For them, it doesn't matter that De Blasio and his policies won big and have huge public support -- they want to destroy him and his policies and the people that these policies help. They believe that De Blasio' policies threaten their socioeconomic dominance -- and they can't stand it!
Whether or not De Blasio is successful in the long run remains to be seen. He may have future policy and political stumbles. He may get caught up in some kind of scandal. There might be a rises that arises that he is incapable of handling. And, of course, the corporate/Republican/media/state government jihad may ultimate succeed in defeating his planned re-election bid in 2017.
But, for now, I'm grateful that, at this moment of history, NYC has a progressive mayor that actually cares about the people and is succeeding.
During his 12 years in office, the general consensus about Mayor Michael
Bloomberg was that, sure, he might be a heartless technocrat but ... he
was competent; sure, the cost of living in NYC might be exploding but ... he was competent; sure, the police might be using aggressive, possibly illegal tactics but ... he was competent;
sure, he might be trying to destroy the public school system and
teachers unions and turn education all over to for-profit charter
schools but ... he was competent. Yes, he might be overseeing the destruction of middle class NYC, turning us into a city of haves and have-nots but ... he was competent!
And what was the basis for this competency claim?
Well,
he loved technology. Loved, loved, loved it. Under Bloomberg's watch,
Google opened an office in NYC and, in conjunction with Cornell
University, built a tech campus on Roosevelt Island. The media loves
technology, the powers-that-be love technology, so if Bloomberg loved
technology and wanted to apply it to government, that must make him
great ... and therefore competent. He vetoed living wage laws and did
other heartless things with the budget so he was viewed as "fiscally
responsible." He instituted "bike share" and other such fancy programs.
Most of all, his background as a Fortune 500 CEO gave him the
reputation of the ultimate skilled manager. Bloomberg was competent
because, well, he had to be!
Mayor Mike also benefited from a
very compliant City Council, lead for most of his time in office by the
obsequious Christine Quinn, as well the contrast of the gubmint' in
Washington, DC which, no matter who is president or which party is in
control, seems incapable for governing. This made it possible for
Bloomberg to boast about how he "got things done", "got results," etc.
etc. etc. He regularly made the Time 100.
When Bill De Blasio was
elected to replace Bloomberg as mayor, the media and "centrist"
intelligentsia bemoaned the loss of this super competent technocrat
executive at the city's helm, believing that he had bequeathed a
wonderful, paradisiacal city that his class warrior successor would
inevitably screw up. Et in arcadia ego.
But it was all a
lie. In fact, Bloomberg left behind a mess. Bloomberg was not the
mythically competent mayor that his media allies and sycophants
proclaimed. Bike share is going broke. The policing at Riker's Island is
criminal disaster. The city's emergency response has been dysfunctional
for years. Mayor Bloomberg left behind more than a 100 city contracts
unsigned with the public workers unions, forcing De Blasio negotiate all
of them. And these are just some of the problems the great Mike left
for his successor.
The argument for heartless, mean-spirited governing ala
Bloomberg style is that, well, you know, leaders have to make tough
choices and can't give in to every do-gooder's Utopian wish list which
will ultimately bankrupt the government. In this view, competency =
cruelty. But what if, like Mayor Bloomberg, you're both cruel and
incompetent? Well, then you are the ultimate failure. Because at least
the do-gooders have good intentions, competency or not. The cruel don't
have even that.
Meanwhile, the New York of our hearts
increasingly slips away, from reality to legend. Thanks to Bloomberg's
"competency", soon we won't recognize it.
Last year I blogged about how NYC is increasingly becoming a corporate city -- a city ruled by and for the very rich. Of course, NYC has always been a "corporate city" since it has long been the capital for corporate America, with many great national and international businesses headquartered here. But there used to be a division between the corporate world in NYC and how the city government was actually run.
The corporate/private enterprise world didn't control our government, didn't have power over our land-use, our public schools, even our parks.
But now it does: charter schools are replacing public schools, parks are being run less by the parks department and more by private foundations -- and the city is turning over huge swaths of our public lands to corporations.
Look at this week's New York magazine for proof. There are two huge articles -- one a huge new super-expensive luxury apartment building (that is primarily for people who don't even really live in NYC) and another on Hudson Yards which will be the biggest, most expensive private development in our city's history.
This is radical. And totally out of character with NYC's history.
It's very depressing and scary to think about how this wonderful, great city -- a place where "our poor huddled masses" used to come in search of a better life is being turned into a place where only the rich are welcomed and can survive. It's still a great city, still great place to live but, if we continue down the road of the corporate city, will we still be so?
The media today is obsessed with the Republican/Democrat, Red/Blue, Liberal/Conservative, urban vs. rural socioeconomic/political/cultural divide. The two America's at war with each other, pushing and pulling the country apart -- one America wanting to make us more like Canada (the liberal urban Democrats) and the other wanting to make us more like Mexico (the conservative rural Republicans). This "divide" is at the heart of the current narrative of American politics, with NYC as the capital of Blue America (and I guess the whole state of Texas being the capital of Red America but there are many contenders for that title I suppose).
But like so many simplistic generalities, this "narrative" is wrong. For NYC isn't really the bastion of liberalism that the media, the conservatives, and the rest of America think it is. And it's not just that we've just elected Republican mayors for the last 20 years (but that's part of it). It's that NYC has become, over the last thirty years, a corporate city, one where corporations and powerful private interests have acquired huge power over our city's government, dictating policies that affect our lives, all while eviscerating public power and crushing the middle while helping the rich.
Let the Free Market rule!
Ad increasingly, since the age of Ed Koch and Ronald Reagan thirty years ago to the time of Mike Bloomberg and George Bush and Barack Obama today, the Free Market has been ruling NYC and controlling its destiny like never before.
Private money has never been more powerful than it is today in NYC. Same is true in other "hotbeds of liberalism" around the country like Chicago and Washington, DC. I could go on here and give example after example of how NYC today is a Corporate City and how it's "liberalism" isn't quite what it seems. But the always great Matt Taibbi and the brilliant David Sirota have written about it in such perfect language that I will simply re-post some of things they said about it here.
First, Taibbi writes about Mayor Bloomberg, the ultimate corporate mayor, and how this incredibly reactionary mayor has thrived in "liberal" NYC for more than a decade:
[Bloomberg] is a billionaire Wall Street creature with an extreme deregulatory bent who has quietly advanced some nastily regressive police policies… but has won over upper-middle-class liberals with his stances on choice and gay marriage and other social issues.
Bloomberg’s main attraction as a politician has been his ability to stick closely to a holy trinity of basic PR principles: bang heavily on black crime, embrace social issues dear to white progressives, and in the remaining working hours give your pals on Wall Street (who can raise any money you need, if you somehow run out of your own) whatever they want.
He understands that as long as you keep muggers and pimps out of the prime shopping areas in the Upper West Side, and make sure to sound the right notes on abortion, stem-cell research, global warming, and the like, you can believably play the role of the wisecracking, good-guy-billionaire Belle of the Ball…
Second, David Sirota notes what Taibbi wrote and also looks at the corporate city as a wider American phenomenon. Sirota writes about how Chicago has privatized its public infrastructure, selling off highways and parking meters to private interests. The big city Democratic mayors have been trying to destroy public employee unions with the same zeal as Republican governors (Chicago again, and Denver). The charter school movement that has been funded by big private interests -- including Wal Mart! -- has spread in "liberal" cities like LA, New Orleans, and DC (which gave us the odious Michelle Rhee, the schools head who wants to destroy every teachers union in America). Many "liberal" cities have been slashing city budgets and reducing public services while refusing to raise taxes on the rich but offering huge public subsidies for stadiums, office buildings, and public/private ventures (always making the argument that this will "create jobs" and "raise tax revenues" for cities -- but almost never doing that in reality and in fact costing these cities money in the long run).
These are corporate cities if there ever were any, and NYC is at the forefront of it. But because our media is so obsessed with cultural issues over economic ones, a city is "liberal" if most of its people support abortion or gay rights or gun control -- not if its leaders are selling their people out to private interests and destroying the public sector. Sirota writes:
Though Taibbi was writing about Bloomberg specifically, his words aptly sum up what the American cityscape has become — yet more scorched earth in the successful assault of Limousine Liberals and Crony Corporatists on Lunch-Pail Liberals and Progressive Populists. In political terms, it represents the broader success of the transpartisan moneyed class in fully redefining “liberal” exclusively as “social-issue liberal” — without regard for economic agenda.
So when you look at Occupy Wall Street you see a movement that is simply angry at money and the corporate state controlling our lives and our destinies -- and it goes beyond any party, any mayor, any city. It goes to the heart of what NYC and America has become -- and it wants to fight back.
"May you live in interesting times." This old maxim has lately become our reality. We certainly do live in interesting times, a period that history will remember -- and it's friggin' depressing.
What makes any period of time "interesting" anyway? That's a tough call. Any moment in the past has points that are interesting. But what makes some periods more interesting than others, I guess, are those times when a society -- be it a city, country, or even the whole world -- is going through a particularly fierce and tumultuous battle for its very identity and soul; when it appears that the future is a complete tabularasa, a clean slate that the victor in the battle for power will be able to draw on; where the choices are zero-sum and the winner takes all.
In essence, history is most interesting when it is being transformed.
Think of the Revolutionary War. The Civil War. Certainly World War II. Think of the Battle of Waterloo or 9/11. Think of the Great Depression or the election of Ronald Reagan. People were faced with a choice about what kind of country and world they wanted to live in -- and the battle was on. Thus interesting times ensued. And the world was never the same again.
But interesting times must, at some point, come to a climax -- the story must reach its moment of maximum intensity before going into its denouement.
For the last decade, since 9/11, NYC has been going through some very interesting times. We suffered and then recovered from the worst terrorist attack in history. We went through a dreadful blackout. Most recently, the financial crises hammered the city and the country's economy. We took a beating but got back up.
Yet it feels, more and more, that the interesting times NYC has been going through has been leading right up to this very moment. The climax of our story is upon us. Perhaps I'm being overly dramatic but, when I read the headlines, I get the sense that NYC is at a crossroads, a turning point where we may be permanently transformed in ways in which our city's fate will be sealed forever.
The debate over the "Ground Zero mosque" is but one example. If the forces of darkness, of hate and fear, prevent a private entity from constructing a building purely for religious/political reasons, it will be a dark day for our city and a troubling precedent for our future.
But it wouldn't be the first troubling precedent we've seen lately: less than two years ago the city council blatantly ignored the public will and extended term limits for themselves after city voters had twice approved a two-term limit. This outrageous action spawned a city charter commission that has created two "ballot issues" for this fall's election: one where we get to change term limits back to two and another that is so confusing and strange that no one seems to understand it. This charter commission has been regarded, quite rightly, as a disgrace. It failed to do anything about structural reform in our city government and it allows those council members who are currently in office to still serve three terms! The changing of term limits already brought NYC to a crossroads -- and we went down the wrong path.
And yet another crossroads is one that, in years to come, we will be able literally to see outside our windows. The city council has approved, and financiers and developers are furiously working on, constructing enormous big glass box buildings that will change the city skyline. Now, we all recognize that NYC is dynamic and that buildings go up and down all the time. But as this fine article points out, this "cavalcade of skyscrapers" are ugly as sin and the skyline could start to look like any typically overbuilt, anonymous city -- not the NYC of unique architecture and spirit that we all love. Another crossroads and another (apparently) wrong turn.
Then, as always, there's the economy. Apparently the recession in NYC is over -- and we're doing great! But like everything else in these "interesting times", the reality is more complex and confusing. Apparently if you are professional and upper class and/or live in Manhattan, you are thriving. Wall Street is back! Bonuses are huge! We face less foreclosures and bankruptcies than elsewhere. But if you're middle class or poor, the future in NYC is bleak. Non-professionals who have lost their jobs are struggling mightily and wages for those lucky enough to work are declining. Most distressingly, high long-term unemployment is becoming a permanent fixture of the city economy. This really is becoming a city of the haves and have-nots, of rich and poor. Increasingly 21st century NYC is beginning to resemble 19th century Russia. Our economy, our city's very well-being, is at a crossroads as well -- and it appears to be going in the wrong direction too.
So as the long decade since 9/11 comes to a close in NYC, the interesting times of the last several years are playing out -- and this is how the city has been transformed since then; this is the climax to our story. The rich are richer than ever before, the poor are getting poorer. The middle class is becoming but a memory. The city is increasingly starting to resemble Dubai and our government is as rinky-dink as ever. We are allowing the forces of darkness to overwhelm the forces of reason and the city is more polarized than ever.
NYC will always be a great city and I will always love it. But we're at a crossroads now and it looks like we're inching down the wrong path. Let's hope we change course before it's too late.
The whole hubbub about whether or not Governor Paterson can appoint a Lieutenant Governor made me wonder: what if the Mayor's office fell vacate? Who takes over then? What's the deal?
From what I understand, the first in line is the Public Advocate. If the Mayor dies, resigns, is removed, or becomes incapacitated at any point during the first three years of a term, the PA takes over for 60 days until a special election can be held. Whoever wins then finishes that term. However, if the Mayor's job is vacated in the fourth year of a term, the PA serves as acting Mayor until the end of that year and term (there's no special election since in that year there's already a regularly scheduled Mayoral election). Also, an acting Mayor does not have the full powers of an elected Mayor (can't appoint or fire people, can't sign bills, etc.). Got it?
However, I took a quick look at the City Charter today and found a confusing clause: apparently, it doesn't have to be the PA who necessarily takes over. It can also be the Comptroller or some other unspecified official. There's all kind of clauses and rules and confusing jargon in here that makes it unclear precisely who becomes acting Mayor and for how long. There's paragraphs of stuff about succession upon a vacancy and a lot of it is contradictory. It's very odd.
To me this seems ridiculous and dangerous since it can create a vacuum and battle for power. Also, holding a special election 60 days after a vacancy creates unneeded political turmoil and makes a proper and smooth transition problematic.
I think this is dumb.
We should revise the City Charter and make it clear: one person, one elected city official (either the PA or Comptroller) should become Mayor upon a vacancy. That person should then complete the end of that term with full mayoral authority.
Either that or a Deputy Mayor should be elected with the Mayor like a VP is with the President or an LG is with the Governor. That way there doesn't have to be an uncomfortable or confusing political situation - for example, if a Democratic PA succeeds a Republican Mayor, the new Dem Mayor might have different policies than the old GOP Mayor. Seems smart to me.
This is still an issue for debate. According to the city government, NYC was "founded" in 1625. The Dutch sailors came in 1624 but didn't charter "New Amsterdam" until 1653. I think 1653 should be the birthday year since that's when this area was officially declared a city. Seems obvious to me.
Hmmm? I guess cities are the opposite of people: when they lie about their age, they make themselves older.
