Latest / Revisionist History / The Staten Island Problem - Part 3: The Tuvalu Effect

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The Staten Island Problem - Part 3: The Tuvalu Effect · Revisionist History

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Speaker 1: Pushkin Ben Mata Haffer Here before we get into this episode,
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0:58
Speaker 1: Every morning, a Staten Island attorney named David Goldfarb used
1:01
Speaker 1: to walk by Burrow Hall on his way to the ferry.
1:04
Speaker 1: Some days he'd see a short, white haired man with
1:07
Speaker 1: big glasses waving him down. Borough. President Guy Molinary. Mollinary,
1:14
Speaker 1: you might remember from episode one, was Staten Island's rabble
1:17
Speaker 1: rouser in chief. He was constantly feuding with the Dinkins administration.
1:22
Speaker 2: He would stop and see me and ask me to
1:24
Speaker 2: come into his office. He liked to talk to anybody
1:27
Speaker 2: and everybody. He would just call you in their office
1:30
Speaker 2: and would sit down and just have this. And I
1:33
Speaker 2: would say, you know, I have to go to work,
1:35
Speaker 2: I have to get a ferry, but he wants. He
1:38
Speaker 2: loved to talk about it.
1:44
Speaker 1: The it here is secession. Molinary loved to talk about
1:48
Speaker 1: it because everyone was talking about it, and David Goldfarb
1:52
Speaker 1: was worried. He liked being part of New York City.
1:57
Speaker 1: He and his wife lived on the North Shore, the
1:59
Speaker 1: most diverse part of the island, closest to Manhattan, in
2:02
Speaker 1: a house with a pull and, depending on the season,
2:05
Speaker 1: two pink lawn flamingos. He worked in a law firm
2:08
Speaker 1: in Manhattan. He did not want to secede from New York,
2:12
Speaker 1: and from their conversations, it seemed like Mullinary was maybe
2:15
Speaker 1: on his side. He had not yet endorsed secession.
2:20
Speaker 2: He told me in the beginning, point blank, that this
2:23
Speaker 2: is never going to be allowed by the Assembly. He said,
2:28
Speaker 2: you know it, say, don't worry about it. It's not
2:30
Speaker 2: going to happen.
2:34
Speaker 1: That may have been what Mullinary was saying, but something
2:37
Speaker 1: was clearly brewing. The movement was everywhere.
2:41
Speaker 3: Welcome to our special cable in the classroom feature on
2:44
Speaker 3: the history of secession, produced exclusively by Staten Island Cable.
2:48
Speaker 1: The local cable station had even made tapes for classrooms
2:52
Speaker 1: to teach kids about secession.
2:54
Speaker 3: The people know why they feel the way they do
2:56
Speaker 3: because they know the facts through learning and education.
2:58
Speaker 1: They were not exactly unbiased.
3:01
Speaker 3: The future of Staten Island is being decided now, history
3:05
Speaker 3: is being made.
3:06
Speaker 2: Be a part of it.
3:09
Speaker 1: David Goldfar did not want to be part of it.
3:15
Speaker 1: What is your nightmare situation here?
3:17
Speaker 2: I mean with the North Shore end up like Northern Ireland,
3:22
Speaker 2: with some of the communities on the north Shore that
3:24
Speaker 2: voted against it would not be included. It would be
3:27
Speaker 2: the same situation you have network Staten Island felt or
3:31
Speaker 2: alienated from the City of New York. Parts of the
3:34
Speaker 2: North Shore would have felt alienated from the rest of
3:37
Speaker 2: Staten Island.
3:39
Speaker 1: The secessionists had to be stopped. You're listening to revisionist history.
3:48
Speaker 1: I'm then that of Haffrey and this is the Staten
3:51
Speaker 1: Island problem. Our series about the Staten Island secession movement
3:54
Speaker 1: of the nineteen nineties and more broadly, about what we
3:57
Speaker 1: do when in democracy fractures. Last episode was about the
4:03
Speaker 1: psychology of secession who wants to leave and why? This
4:07
Speaker 1: episode is about the people who don't want to leave
4:11
Speaker 1: and the fight that ensued between them in the battle
4:14
Speaker 1: for Staten Island. This is episode three the two value effect.
4:31
Speaker 1: As the secessionists marauded around the island and the cable
4:35
Speaker 1: news station went to work brainwashing the children, the people
4:38
Speaker 1: on Staten Island who actually liked being part of New
4:40
Speaker 1: York City realized they had to get organized, so Goldfarb
4:44
Speaker 1: joined a group of like minded individuals Staten Islanders for
4:48
Speaker 1: Unified New York Siphoony, the message of which was what
4:52
Speaker 1: are you doing? This is going to ruin Staten Island.
4:56
Speaker 1: It'll be fairly.
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Speaker 4: It'll be a free, floating debate.
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Speaker 5: The debaters will feel free to interrupt each other.
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Speaker 1: One spring evening in nineteen ninety three, Siphuni and the
5:07
Speaker 1: pro secessionists gathered at the College of Staten Island for
5:10
Speaker 1: a debate. The space looks like a lecture hall. Four
5:14
Speaker 1: men in suits at a table with Mike's heroes and
5:16
Speaker 1: cokes on a table on the back. A handful of
5:19
Speaker 1: students and concerned citizens sit in the audience, and Goldfarb
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Speaker 1: was front and center.
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Speaker 6: Speaking against se session will be mister David Goldfarb, an
5:30
Speaker 6: attorney active in many local civic groups impacted.
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Speaker 7: All these people.
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Speaker 1: Siphony went toe to toe with the secessionists all around
5:37
Speaker 1: the island again and again. The big secessionist organization was
5:42
Speaker 1: called Vote Yes, Inc.
5:44
Speaker 6: Speaking in favor of secession will be mister Dan Singletary,
5:49
Speaker 6: a local artist.
5:51
Speaker 1: Dan Singletary, the artist slash Cowboy from last episode, represented them, if.
5:56
Speaker 8: We start and we build a new city of stat Noland,
6:00
Speaker 8: a city for the first for the twenty first century,
6:02
Speaker 8: the first city of the twenty first century.
6:04
Speaker 3: We could date.
6:06
Speaker 1: Singletary was promoting a glorious vision of what the island
6:09
Speaker 1: could be. Goldfarb was bringing them back down to earth.
6:13
Speaker 1: If Staten Island became an independent city, they were going
6:16
Speaker 1: to have to take care of a whole lot of
6:17
Speaker 1: things for themselves, like a police department or a public
6:20
Speaker 1: school system. They'd finally have to build a jail. David
6:25
Speaker 1: Goldfarb had a lot to say about that.
6:29
Speaker 9: These are the things that you're just going to have
6:31
Speaker 9: to lose, because there's absolutely no way that Staten Island's
6:34
Speaker 9: going to have to be able to add this to
6:35
Speaker 9: their capital budget. Because you're not going to be when
6:37
Speaker 9: the police officer arrests somebody on Staten Island, they're not
6:40
Speaker 9: going to be able to send that person to Rikers Island.
6:43
Speaker 9: They're not going to be able to send them to
6:44
Speaker 9: the lock up overnight in Brooklyn. They're going to have
6:47
Speaker 9: to have a jail on Staten Island. City of New
6:48
Speaker 9: York is not going to take our prisoners. These are
6:51
Speaker 9: costs you're going to have to pacete. I think it's
6:52
Speaker 9: going to be a major step backwards financially.
6:55
Speaker 1: Goldfarb, it's worth noting, has argued in front of the
6:58
Speaker 1: Supreme Court. Singletary fired back, you have just seen.
7:03
Speaker 8: A perfect example, a classic example of what's being played
7:07
Speaker 8: out in what's called the politics of fear. He never
7:10
Speaker 8: said one good thing. Isn't there any hope? That's not me.
7:15
Speaker 8: They don't have any hope.
7:19
Speaker 1: As I watched the tapes, I felt like Siphoony was
7:22
Speaker 1: pointing out the obvious. Being part of New York City
7:25
Speaker 1: was financially a great deal for a small island. Goldfarb
7:29
Speaker 1: was saying, the future is unknown and probably worse. Singletary
7:33
Speaker 1: was arguing that the present was known and bad, and
7:35
Speaker 1: the future might be a lot better.
7:38
Speaker 4: To either of you.
7:39
Speaker 10: Guys.
7:39
Speaker 4: I asked this question before.
7:40
Speaker 8: I know how many agencies and commissions there are in
7:43
Speaker 8: New York.
7:43
Speaker 2: Any why din't you tell us?
7:44
Speaker 9: Dan, I have no idea, and the Marion tell either.
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Speaker 4: But this is what's being funded.
7:49
Speaker 8: This is what's being funded.
7:50
Speaker 1: We have The last singletary holds up an ominous looking
7:53
Speaker 1: stack of papers.
7:56
Speaker 8: Okay, anyway, this is a list of anciencies and things
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Speaker 8: that you've never heard of, never used. Why don't we
8:01
Speaker 8: start cutting this instead of these guys always saying the
8:04
Speaker 8: essential services?
8:05
Speaker 1: Okay, let me just tell you us that follow up
8:07
Speaker 1: on his question, we may or may not be obviously.
8:10
Speaker 1: The definition of singletary was joined by Vote Yes Inks
8:13
Speaker 1: champion debater Robert Scammerdella you met him last episode two.
8:18
Speaker 1: He's the attorney who grew up on Staten Island and
8:20
Speaker 1: remembers it prebridge as an entirely different and better place.
8:25
Speaker 1: At the debate, he sat back in his chair, arms folded,
8:28
Speaker 1: looking a little grumpy.
8:30
Speaker 11: What I do know is this that since the end
8:33
Speaker 11: of World War Two, the city of New York has
8:35
Speaker 11: been an economic decline. I believe that that economic decline
8:39
Speaker 11: will continue because the City of New York doesn't have
8:42
Speaker 11: the people or the willingness to embark upon those policies
8:47
Speaker 11: that are necessary to turn that decline around. The other
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Speaker 11: thing I know is that Staten Island has the highest
8:52
Speaker 11: per capita income of any borough in the City of
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Speaker 11: New York. From that, I could do Staten Island will have.
8:57
Speaker 6: The economic resources to survive and to be in a
9:01
Speaker 6: position to make their own decisions about firemen and policemen
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Speaker 6: and college professors and every other decision that affects me
9:07
Speaker 6: and everyone else who lives on Staten Island.
9:10
Speaker 1: Like the Great American Revolution, this secession debate was really
9:13
Speaker 1: all about taxes. Votes was saying, we'll figure it out,
9:17
Speaker 1: and who needs all those services anyways? Goldfarb was saying,
9:21
Speaker 1: you need more than you think, and it's going to
9:23
Speaker 1: cost you.
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Speaker 2: And that's they are because if it's a political decision
9:26
Speaker 2: and you're willing.
9:27
Speaker 9: To pay those extra taxes, that's something that that has
9:30
Speaker 9: to be considered.
9:30
Speaker 2: But let's talk about or maybe.
9:32
Speaker 11: Stayed on the low way.
9:33
Speaker 2: Taxes, well, they want to speculate, I'll speculate that doctors,
9:36
Speaker 2: well all that name finish.
9:39
Speaker 1: This spilled out way beyond the debate stage. It was
9:42
Speaker 1: in the paper all the time. He was the hot
9:44
Speaker 1: topic of conversation all over the island. When I sat
9:47
Speaker 1: down with Scammerdella, he remembered this one time he and
9:50
Speaker 1: his wife went to a wedding at the Staten, the
9:52
Speaker 1: island's grand catering hall.
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Speaker 12: Go out to a social event. A wedding is sitting
9:57
Speaker 12: at a table with people you don't know, uh, and
10:00
Speaker 12: the Broyde cuts the cake. Was irrelevant. Here we are
10:02
Speaker 12: talking about, uh, the secession.
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Speaker 1: How did your wife feel about this?
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Speaker 12: Well, she was very upset. We're on the way home
10:11
Speaker 12: and she was like, you know, can't you just deal
10:14
Speaker 12: with the secession thing when you're at these debates? You
10:16
Speaker 12: got to turn a wedding into a secession debate. I
10:18
Speaker 12: didn't start it, ask me the question, and.
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Speaker 11: Here we went.
10:22
Speaker 12: So it was a bit of an embarrassing moment for me.
10:26
Speaker 12: I guess I regret that I did what I did.
10:29
Speaker 12: But the point is it was a hot button issue.
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Speaker 1: An interesting fact I learned about city secession movements at
10:40
Speaker 1: large is most of the time it's about taxes. A
10:44
Speaker 1: rich area thinks, why should we pay for all of
10:46
Speaker 1: those services? The poor people are getting. If we just
10:49
Speaker 1: hoarded our resources, we could have it so much better here.
10:53
Speaker 1: What's weird about Staten Island secession is that multiple studies
10:57
Speaker 1: by New York City and the secessionists agreed that Staten
11:01
Speaker 1: Island got more in tax revenue than it paid. The
11:05
Speaker 1: secession movement you'd expect from New York City is that Manhattan,
11:08
Speaker 1: with all that Wall Street money, leaves the other four burroughs,
11:11
Speaker 1: not Staten Island. Goldfarb was raising kind of a good point.
11:17
Speaker 1: What was the long game here? What was the tax base?
11:20
Speaker 1: How are they going to close the dump if that
11:22
Speaker 1: was Staten Island's most valuable asset. Also, what about the
11:26
Speaker 1: fact that New York City controlled their water supply? So
11:30
Speaker 1: Goldfarb I think was right, but the momentum was not
11:34
Speaker 1: at all on his side because something else was going
11:37
Speaker 1: on here, something hiding in plain sight, having to do
11:43
Speaker 1: with a remote Polynesian island called Tuvalu. We'll be right back.
12:01
Speaker 1: I have this feeling that nothing holds anymore like. I
12:04
Speaker 1: work in media, and where a career used to mean
12:06
Speaker 1: you go work at a big newspaper or magazine, these days,
12:09
Speaker 1: it's starting your own newsletter. Or podcast one person, maybe
12:12
Speaker 1: two in a mic. Or take international affairs, the United Nations, NATO,
12:17
Speaker 1: the European Union, Brexit. There's this mass loss of faith
12:21
Speaker 1: in the ability of people or nations to form groups
12:24
Speaker 1: that work for the benefit of everyone. Put another way,
12:28
Speaker 1: we seem to be living in an era to find
12:30
Speaker 1: by the principle that every man is an island. So
12:34
Speaker 1: I started thinking, maybe the best way to understand the
12:37
Speaker 1: world and the Staten island problem bedeviling it is to
12:41
Speaker 1: speak to an authority on islands. What even is island studies?
12:47
Speaker 4: Okay, so I mean I'm in Malta.
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Speaker 13: So Malta is itself in archipelago, right, It's actually the
12:52
Speaker 13: tent smalll lest country in the world by land area.
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Speaker 1: Godfrey Baldachino, professor of island studies, which maybe should be
13:01
Speaker 1: called archipelago studies, and which took me down a deep
13:05
Speaker 1: but very necessary rabbit hole. Join me.
13:09
Speaker 13: These islands are islands plural. It is very rare that
13:14
Speaker 13: you find a single island. In fact, of the world's
13:17
Speaker 13: forty eighth island countries, only five are single islands.
13:24
Speaker 1: Wow.
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Speaker 13: So we're talking in the plural, and therefore in some
13:28
Speaker 13: of these configurations. There is a very interesting dynamic going
13:33
Speaker 13: on within the archipelago right.
13:37
Speaker 1: Most archipelago states have a strict hierarchy, beginning with the
13:41
Speaker 1: mainland that dominates the other islands. New York City is
13:45
Speaker 1: an archipelago, and it turns out that the weird thing
13:48
Speaker 1: happening in New York in the nineties is actually entirely
13:51
Speaker 1: in line with weird things that happen on other archipelagos
13:54
Speaker 1: all the time, for instance, the trash island.
14:02
Speaker 4: Where you have archipelagos, the tendency has been to export
14:05
Speaker 4: the waste from the mainland where the bulk of the
14:07
Speaker 4: population lives, where the bulk of the waste is produced,
14:11
Speaker 4: and you export it to another island.
14:13
Speaker 13: In the archipelago. Sometimes you dedicate an island to waste.
14:17
Speaker 13: The classic example is in the Maldives. The Maldives is
14:20
Speaker 13: a fantastic tourism destination and the Indian Ocean, but it
14:24
Speaker 13: also has a waste island.
14:26
Speaker 1: Really just an entire island. That's just an entire island.
14:29
Speaker 4: Yeah, Ti La Fusi is the name.
14:31
Speaker 1: But so what about when the waste island is inhabited
14:34
Speaker 1: but by a political minority and a population minority.
14:38
Speaker 13: The temptation to use it to dump is massive. It's
14:42
Speaker 13: not necessarily municipal waste. That could be human waste. Convicts,
14:47
Speaker 13: for example, prisons islands have tended to be associated with prisons,
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Speaker 13: with quarantine stations, with leappar stations.
14:54
Speaker 1: Right Saten Island had all those things.
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Speaker 4: Okay, there you are.
15:02
Speaker 1: Australia was Britain's prison island. Tasmania was Australia's prison island,
15:06
Speaker 1: and then off of Tasmania there were even smaller islands
15:09
Speaker 1: than we're their prison island. It's all islands, all the
15:12
Speaker 1: way down, islands putting things they don't want on other islands,
15:16
Speaker 1: escaping to yet further islands. One of the ways to
15:19
Speaker 1: stop that island cascade is theoretically a bridge like what
15:24
Speaker 1: Staten Island got.
15:25
Speaker 13: Bridges create what is called distance decay, right, so the
15:31
Speaker 13: islands have become closer.
15:33
Speaker 1: The bridge was finally supposed to tie the islands of
15:36
Speaker 1: New York together, but this bridge became yet another problem
15:39
Speaker 1: for Staten Island, not least of all because of its toll.
15:44
Speaker 13: Where After there are tolls, the argument goes, especially from
15:48
Speaker 13: the island, there's point of view, they're not crossing over
15:51
Speaker 13: to go on a holiday.
15:52
Speaker 4: They're not tourists.
15:53
Speaker 14: You know.
15:54
Speaker 13: Sometimes I have to cross over for work, for school,
15:57
Speaker 13: visiting relatives. So this is not an adventure. This is
16:00
Speaker 13: a way of life.
16:01
Speaker 4: So the toll becomes a mobility tax.
16:11
Speaker 1: Island theorists have a name for this. It's called the
16:14
Speaker 1: two Valu effect, named after a small Polynesian island. It's
16:19
Speaker 1: meant to describe the quote unquote centrifugal tendency of islands
16:23
Speaker 1: in archipelago states to secede from each other.
16:27
Speaker 13: There's nothing worse than having two islands next to each other.
16:32
Speaker 13: We can't stand them. This psychology has also a habit
16:37
Speaker 13: of spilling over into politics, so the Tubono effect is
16:41
Speaker 13: a way of trying to explain all this.
16:46
Speaker 1: Islands and archipelagos are almost always pulling apart from each other.
16:50
Speaker 1: Baldaquino's list went on and on, Aruba from the Dutch Antilles,
16:54
Speaker 1: Anguila from Saint Kitts Nevas, Nevus from Saint Kitts Nevas,
16:58
Speaker 1: or at least they're trying to Jamaica, then Trinidad and Tobago,
17:02
Speaker 1: then Barbados from the West Indies Federation, the Island of
17:06
Speaker 1: Chuck from the Federated States of Micronesia. And why is
17:12
Speaker 1: Frock trying to succede.
17:14
Speaker 13: Because it finds it it claims to find itself discriminated.
17:18
Speaker 13: I mean again, much of this is psychology. So the
17:21
Speaker 13: Tuvalu effect has been both preceded and followed by similar examples,
17:27
Speaker 13: and there is no end in sight.
17:35
Speaker 1: When we talk about reactionary politics, the word insular comes
17:38
Speaker 1: up a lot. Insular comes from the Latin insula, which
17:43
Speaker 1: literally means island. The world is full of insular islands
17:47
Speaker 1: that are centrifically spinning away from each other. And in
17:50
Speaker 1: the pantheon of reactionary communities, Staten Island is the definition
17:55
Speaker 1: the place that feels that threat, that has lost something,
17:59
Speaker 1: the trash island in the archipelago.
18:03
Speaker 14: I don't think people just said, well, well, we want
18:05
Speaker 14: Staten Island.
18:06
Speaker 7: They never even.
18:07
Speaker 14: Thought about us.
18:09
Speaker 1: Brian Leylan has been editing the newspaper The Staten Island
18:12
Speaker 1: Advance since the nineteen nineties. And for any Staten Islanders
18:15
Speaker 1: out there who think it's pronounced advance, he told me
18:18
Speaker 1: it's advance. Leyline grew up on the island. He's maybe
18:22
Speaker 1: the world expert on its version of the island.
18:24
Speaker 14: Psyche a house was right at the beach, so we
18:28
Speaker 14: used to go to the You could see it from
18:30
Speaker 14: the street, the bridge, who you know, the bridge being built.
18:34
Speaker 14: Robin Moses saw Staten Island as a gateway either if
18:38
Speaker 14: you were coming north from New Jersey and south to
18:41
Speaker 14: a long island to wo Manhattan and the other way around.
18:44
Speaker 1: It's like the New York City equivalent of flyover country exactly.
18:49
Speaker 1: This is what caught my ear about Godfrey Baldachino's island theory.
18:53
Speaker 1: It describes Staten Island, but it also describes places that
18:55
Speaker 1: are resentful because they feel remote, even if they're landlocked.
18:59
Speaker 1: It's the psychology of distance plus misunderstanding which leads to resentment.
19:07
Speaker 14: I've always said that we have the sturdy little sequent
19:09
Speaker 14: on Steff. We pat ourselves in the back that with
19:12
Speaker 14: this mom and pop community, no crime, great schools. Call
19:17
Speaker 14: it what you will. There is an intolerance here. You
19:21
Speaker 14: can say there's racism here. There's no doubt about that,
19:23
Speaker 14: and there is today the way it was then and
19:25
Speaker 14: it has been my.
19:26
Speaker 1: Whole life waylines deep understanding of Staten Island had given
19:31
Speaker 1: him an almost prophetic understanding of American politics today.
19:35
Speaker 14: I knew that Donald Trump was going to win the
19:38
Speaker 14: election in sixteen.
19:39
Speaker 8: I know it.
19:41
Speaker 1: How do you know it?
19:41
Speaker 14: Because I because I live on Staten Island, and Staten
19:44
Speaker 14: Island is much like Middle America. It's not this is
19:50
Speaker 14: not New York City. Here we may be called part
19:53
Speaker 14: of New York City, but we we are. The mood
19:57
Speaker 14: here is what the mood was in Middle America. You know,
20:00
Speaker 14: this whole maker make America great thing for who?
20:07
Speaker 1: And some of the same dynamics were in play with
20:09
Speaker 1: the election of Trump as they were for people voting
20:11
Speaker 1: for secession.
20:14
Speaker 14: I think the motives behind secession were good. I think
20:20
Speaker 14: that John Malkey State Senative think he did it for
20:26
Speaker 14: the purest reasons of self governance. I think the community
20:32
Speaker 14: of Staten Island looked at it another way. I've always
20:36
Speaker 14: felt that when the bridge was built, it gave people
20:41
Speaker 14: access to a community that was it was like virgin territory,
20:45
Speaker 14: and they could come here and make a new life
20:49
Speaker 14: for themselves and escape whatever they wanted to escape. And
20:53
Speaker 14: they brought that attitude here with them.
20:57
Speaker 1: What they wanted to escape was often people of color
21:01
Speaker 1: and poor people. If New York City had always represented
21:05
Speaker 1: the dream of liberalism, this was the final chance to
21:08
Speaker 1: leave that dream behind, to be Staten Islanders, not New Yorkers.
21:15
Speaker 1: That identity ran deeper and stronger than David Dinkins's idea
21:19
Speaker 1: that the city was a mosaic. It was much more
21:22
Speaker 1: emotionally resonant than David Goldfarb's reasoning about the facts and figures,
21:27
Speaker 1: or even everyone's complaints about the dump and the voting
21:29
Speaker 1: structure of New York City. And the word that expressed
21:33
Speaker 1: it best was secession. We'll be back on October fifth,
21:54
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety three, the vote yes and the vote no.
21:57
Speaker 1: People gathered at the Staten the Island's catering hall for
22:01
Speaker 1: climactic debate. It was just weeks before the vote that
22:05
Speaker 1: would decide the fate of Staaten Island in New York City.
22:09
Speaker 15: Him back to our forum on secession. There's an evening
22:14
Speaker 15: in which we're trying to get answers to the question
22:18
Speaker 15: whether or not Staten Island should secede from the City
22:22
Speaker 15: of New York.
22:26
Speaker 1: It was the big show, now broadcast live on Staten
22:29
Speaker 1: Island cable, and the city had sent one of its officials,
22:33
Speaker 1: a Staten Islander named Bob Federa, who argued that Staten
22:36
Speaker 1: Island should not secede.
22:39
Speaker 16: While some people may believe that secession represents a panacea
22:43
Speaker 16: that will cure all of Staten Island's problems, I do
22:46
Speaker 16: not believe it is the answer.
22:48
Speaker 1: There were questions from the audience.
22:51
Speaker 7: I'd like to all right, yeah.
22:54
Speaker 1: The guy intinted shades, slick back hair stands up.
22:57
Speaker 17: Whether it be true or not, secession can be viewed
23:01
Speaker 17: as racist by minorities for those who live here and
23:05
Speaker 17: for those who don't. It will certainly add to what
23:09
Speaker 17: look like white light.
23:11
Speaker 7: Can somebody respond to that?
23:13
Speaker 1: Federa tries to respond.
23:15
Speaker 16: What I have heard within those groups is that they
23:20
Speaker 16: attach on to groups in the other boroughs because some
23:25
Speaker 16: of the island representatives will not even open the door today.
23:29
Speaker 16: In many ways, the minority communities will lose that connection
23:33
Speaker 16: with the rest of the city, the connection in which
23:35
Speaker 16: they really see the source of their power, and secession
23:39
Speaker 16: ultimately would cut that power.
23:43
Speaker 1: This question seems like it should be a grand slam
23:46
Speaker 1: for Federa, but actually he's in a very tight spot
23:49
Speaker 1: as a representative of the first black mayor of New
23:52
Speaker 1: York City. On the one hand, a lot of the
23:54
Speaker 1: Dinkins administration seem to think that Yes Secession was racist.
23:58
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, they couldn't be seen to
24:01
Speaker 1: be playing the race card all the time. They were
24:03
Speaker 1: caught between a rock and a hard place. Meanwhile, Dan
24:08
Speaker 1: Singletary and the Vote Yes crew kept bringing the discussion
24:11
Speaker 1: back to how much better Staten Island would be without
24:14
Speaker 1: the big city looming over it.
24:16
Speaker 8: What will happen is that these regulations that find small
24:20
Speaker 8: business is when somebody drops a stick of gum or
24:23
Speaker 8: or gum wrapper, and five minutes later an inspector comes
24:26
Speaker 8: by and gives them a very large ticket. That will
24:28
Speaker 8: not happen in a new city of Staten Island.
24:31
Speaker 1: It didn't help that the anti secession hast had tremendous
24:33
Speaker 1: narc energy.
24:35
Speaker 10: Frankly, if you drop a stick of gum wrapper on
24:37
Speaker 10: the sidewalk, I hope to give you a ticket worth
24:40
Speaker 10: about one thousand dollars.
24:41
Speaker 1: The audience was starting to get frustrated with the Vote
24:44
Speaker 1: No people.
24:45
Speaker 10: The things that we have to say are not necessarily
24:48
Speaker 10: popular things. Now, if castor oil is something that's unpleasant
24:53
Speaker 10: to take, sometimes it's necessary. And this was supposed to
24:56
Speaker 10: not be a popularity contest. This was supposed to be
24:59
Speaker 10: a frank and open exchange. So I'm asking you to
25:03
Speaker 10: let's just get back to what this forum was supposed
25:05
Speaker 10: to originally be about.
25:09
Speaker 1: It was down to closing statements from vote. Now, are we.
25:13
Speaker 15: Going to believe that after we leave the City of
25:16
Speaker 15: New York there's going to be a paradise here on
25:19
Speaker 15: Staten Island?
25:21
Speaker 1: And vote yes?
25:22
Speaker 8: Oh, will you trust your friends and neighbors and the
25:24
Speaker 8: people in Staten Island or you trust the people five
25:27
Speaker 8: miles overseas.
25:29
Speaker 1: The people overseas. It was facts and figures versus the
25:34
Speaker 1: two valu effect. There was no chance.
25:37
Speaker 15: And now I would ask you to raise your hands.
25:42
Speaker 1: The moderator from Staten Island Cable took a stropol just
25:45
Speaker 1: to get a sneak peek of what was going to
25:47
Speaker 1: happen on the day of the vote, less than a
25:49
Speaker 1: month away.
25:51
Speaker 15: All of you who are in favor of seceding from
25:56
Speaker 15: the City of New York, would you please raise your hands.
25:59
Speaker 1: All of the hands you can see on the screen
26:02
Speaker 1: go up.
26:03
Speaker 16: Thank you.
26:05
Speaker 15: All those opposed to seceding from the City of New York,
26:10
Speaker 15: please raise your hands.
26:12
Speaker 1: The vote. No guys raised their hands, and no one else.
26:16
Speaker 7: Larry can ask no, Mark.
26:21
Speaker 10: I hope that was definitive enough for you.
26:28
Speaker 1: It was definitive enough for someone else too, Staten Island
26:32
Speaker 1: borough president Guy Molinary. He was a very canny politician,
26:37
Speaker 1: and yet he had not come out in favor of secession,
26:39
Speaker 1: which I think mattered. How real could all this have
26:42
Speaker 1: been if the borough president for Staten Island wasn't even
26:45
Speaker 1: behind it.
26:47
Speaker 7: The only one was lukewarm was Guy Molinary.
26:50
Speaker 1: This is Bob Stenari, if you're keeping count, that's the
26:53
Speaker 1: third Bob in this episode. He was a Staten Island
26:56
Speaker 1: assemblyman at the time.
26:58
Speaker 7: For some reason, you know why, it wasn't his issue.
27:02
Speaker 7: I mean, I'm telling you it wasn't his issue, so
27:06
Speaker 7: he never really got behind it.
27:09
Speaker 1: Sterrenari and Millinary were not friends. At one point. Sterrenari
27:14
Speaker 1: left the island and started a hot dog business in Manhattan.
27:17
Speaker 1: When he tried to come back to run for office again,
27:19
Speaker 1: Mollinary wasn't having it. As The New York Times.
27:22
Speaker 18: Reported, he never explained what it was that I ever
27:27
Speaker 18: did that made him.
27:31
Speaker 7: So against me personally and politically.
27:34
Speaker 1: The quote is we threw him out of office and
27:36
Speaker 1: got him off of Sadn Island, and we don't want
27:38
Speaker 1: him back.
27:38
Speaker 7: Yeah. Nice.
27:39
Speaker 18: You know, there's a lot of Donald Trump and the
27:41
Speaker 18: guy Molinary's style of politics, so they're very dominating, and
27:47
Speaker 18: they're intolerant of people who disagree with them, absolutely intolerant.
27:57
Speaker 1: Moullinary saw where things were headed with secession, and I
28:00
Speaker 1: think he saw it as an opportunity to get something
28:03
Speaker 1: else he wanted even more. Eight days after that forum,
28:08
Speaker 1: he finally issued a statement on his position. Quote after
28:13
Speaker 1: one hundred years of marriage to Manhattan Queen's Brooklyn and
28:16
Speaker 1: the Bronx, the Borough of Staten Island is seeking a divorce.
28:21
Speaker 1: We neither love, honor nor care to obey the dictates
28:24
Speaker 1: of a city administration which treats us unfairly and remains
28:28
Speaker 1: unresponsive to our needs. I support secession wholeheartedly end quote.
28:37
Speaker 1: It was a huge boost, and this spirit of secession
28:40
Speaker 1: was spreading. He was getting national media attention. Queens had
28:45
Speaker 1: been inspired by Staten Island to start their own secession movement.
28:49
Speaker 1: I found a letter in the municipal archives from a
28:51
Speaker 1: Dinkin's person who said a close associate of New York's
28:54
Speaker 1: governor told him that if secession got a strong yes
28:57
Speaker 1: vote on Staten Island. They would have to quote, take
29:01
Speaker 1: a broad look at the governance of all five boroughs,
29:05
Speaker 1: not just the issue of Staten Island. In the chess
29:09
Speaker 1: match between Staten Island and New York City, Maul and
29:13
Speaker 1: Airy had just played a crucial move, one that was
29:16
Speaker 1: going to get Staten Island everything it wanted, but not
29:19
Speaker 1: the way anyone expected. The fate of the New York
29:24
Speaker 1: City archipelago hung in the balance. On November two, nineteen
29:29
Speaker 1: ninety three, the voters would decide it. But before the election,
29:40
Speaker 1: we have to make a brief detour to a place
29:43
Speaker 1: called shoolinlann. I hear a knock on the studio door.
29:53
Speaker 9: I open it and there's five dudes out there, and
29:58
Speaker 9: then not smiling.
30:00
Speaker 4: People like where are you from.
30:02
Speaker 5: So I used to say, if I tell you, I
30:04
Speaker 5: have to kill you and you're like wine, and then
30:05
Speaker 5: I'm like Staten Island. He took the whole mythology that
30:10
Speaker 5: was in the movies and he appropriated it to his
30:16
Speaker 5: current conditions of a black man living in Staten Island
30:23
Speaker 5: doing battle in this game call rap against the music industry.
30:30
Speaker 1: That's coming up in our next episode. The Staten Island
30:45
Speaker 1: problem is written and reported by me Ben Mattapaffrey. It
30:49
Speaker 1: was produced by Lucy Sullivan with Nina Bird Lawrence. Our
30:52
Speaker 1: editor is Karen Schakerji, Our executive producer is Jacob Smith.
30:56
Speaker 1: Fact checking by Sam Russick, sound design and mastering by
30:59
Speaker 1: Jake Gorsky. Original music by Stellwagen, Symfinet, Luis Garra and
31:04
Speaker 1: Jake Gorsky. Special thanks to Todd Reynolds for his track
31:08
Speaker 1: the Solution from the album how Borough, and to the
31:10
Speaker 1: College of Staten Island and the New York City Municipal
31:13
Speaker 1: Archives for all of the amazing tape, and to David
31:17
Speaker 1: Schleiker for sharing his expertise on municipal secessions with me.
31:22
Speaker 1: And thanks, of course to Malcolm Gladwell. I'm Ben Mattapaffrey.