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The Staten Island Problem - Part 5: Revenge of the Forgotten Borough · Revisionist History

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkambe Election Night, New York City, nineteen ninety three Staten Island.
0:28
Speaker 2: Cables first time and that is hooking up all the
0:30
Speaker 2: headquarters live via Tell.
0:32
Speaker 1: That is Staten Island Cable's host Frank Sepola. Remember Frank,
0:36
Speaker 1: former assistant press secretary for the Staten Island Borough President,
0:40
Speaker 1: the one who got yelled at in those sham meetings
0:42
Speaker 1: late into the night. He got a new job which
0:45
Speaker 1: gave him a front row seat to the big vote.
0:48
Speaker 2: Markie live here on Channel seventy seven from Secession headquarters
0:52
Speaker 2: at the Island Chateau, Channel seventy seven bringing you that live.
0:57
Speaker 1: The end of the campaign had been crazy. Staten Island
1:01
Speaker 1: Borough President Guy Maul and Airy drove around the island
1:03
Speaker 1: in something called the Freedom of Us talking Secession. Staten
1:07
Speaker 1: Island politicians worked the rush hour a fair is to
1:10
Speaker 1: try and gin up more votes to secede, and on
1:13
Speaker 1: election night it looked like it had all paid off.
1:17
Speaker 2: We go to Monica to Clerico at the Island Chateau
1:20
Speaker 2: with the latest results.
1:21
Speaker 3: Monica, there's a new.
1:23
Speaker 4: Total coming in.
1:26
Speaker 5: Well, there you have it, Flank, that sixty six percent
1:30
Speaker 5: is the total.
1:30
Speaker 6: Now.
1:31
Speaker 2: The atmosphere here is it's like a party.
1:35
Speaker 1: The numbers were huge.
1:37
Speaker 7: You know, it's funny ten years ago when Senator Markey
1:40
Speaker 7: first introduced the word secession, if people thought of it
1:43
Speaker 7: as a joke.
1:44
Speaker 2: Absolutely, we know very well that this is no joke.
1:48
Speaker 1: It was a landslide. People were celebrating all over the island.
1:53
Speaker 1: State Senator John Marky gave a victory speech. He was
1:56
Speaker 1: the chief sponsor on the bill to secede in the
1:58
Speaker 1: first place.
2:00
Speaker 3: Do you realize as a city that can plan for
2:03
Speaker 3: its own and doesn't have to say may I, may
2:05
Speaker 3: I do this and may I do that?
2:07
Speaker 1: Are you going to people on the island voted almost
2:13
Speaker 1: two to one in favor of secession.
2:16
Speaker 4: Javane Borrow, I don't know.
2:18
Speaker 5: I think we just might get rid of that nickname.
2:23
Speaker 1: Dan Singletary. Was there that artists who had found on
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Speaker 1: those old tapes passionately arguing for secession.
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Speaker 4: Dan, Obviously your efforts have not been in vain.
2:32
Speaker 5: Did you ever expect to see such political fervor as
2:35
Speaker 5: you've seen tonight?
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Speaker 8: This was one of the most wonderful nights I think for.
2:38
Speaker 9: Stephane Island, for the New York City, and for New
2:41
Speaker 9: York State.
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Speaker 1: It was decisive, or so they thought. As many of
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Speaker 1: you listening already know, Staten Island wasn't going anywhere. It
2:56
Speaker 1: would remain part of New York City. Somewhere in the
2:59
Speaker 1: back of his mind, Singletary knew that too. When did
3:05
Speaker 1: you realize that?
3:06
Speaker 9: Well, I was getting done pretty close to the.
3:08
Speaker 1: Towards the end of this problem. Since you're like, this
3:10
Speaker 1: might actually not happened.
3:13
Speaker 9: I said, but it had to do something. And I said,
3:16
Speaker 9: you know, if we got something out of this was
3:18
Speaker 9: better than what we were.
3:21
Speaker 1: The vote was a referendum. It was Staten Island saying
3:24
Speaker 1: we want to leave, but the New York State government
3:27
Speaker 1: was going to have the final say. And the next year,
3:31
Speaker 1: when the referendum came before the State Assembly, the speaker
3:35
Speaker 1: just killed it. It was dead in the water.
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Speaker 9: I hoped that it might be possible, but I know
3:44
Speaker 9: the probability of all that is so difficult.
3:52
Speaker 1: Someone else had to have known where all this was going, too, Guymullinary.
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Speaker 1: This was supposed to be the biggest night in his
4:00
Speaker 1: borough's history, and yet he was nowhere to be found
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Speaker 1: on the island. Instead, he was in Manhattan with his
4:10
Speaker 1: good friend Rudolph Giuliani, who was at that moment being
4:16
Speaker 1: elected mayor of New York City. When I started this series,
4:32
Speaker 1: I told you that this story would amount to a
4:34
Speaker 1: big argument about where our country finds itself today. There's
4:39
Speaker 1: an old way of thinking about time that I love
4:41
Speaker 1: from the Middle Ages. The idea is that time doesn't
4:44
Speaker 1: just go horizontally where today is closest to tomorrow, but
4:48
Speaker 1: also vertically, that certain days are closer to all their
4:52
Speaker 1: earlier incarnations. Christmas this year is nearer to Christmas last
4:57
Speaker 1: year than it is to December twenty sixth. It's like
5:00
Speaker 1: a wormhole.
5:03
Speaker 10: In.
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Speaker 1: What I'm proposing is that when voters went to the
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Speaker 1: polls on November two, nineteen ninety three, to a elect
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Speaker 1: a mayor and decide whether or not to break New
5:12
Speaker 1: York City up and send Staten Island off on its own,
5:16
Speaker 1: that day was very close to election Day twenty sixteen,
5:21
Speaker 1: that the era we are living in now has everything
5:24
Speaker 1: to do with that moment. Then that, as a historian
5:27
Speaker 1: told me when I began, all this America really does
5:31
Speaker 1: happen first in New York City, and the America happening
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Speaker 1: now is something you could see first in the Staten
5:39
Speaker 1: Island Secession movement, and even more critically, in the man
5:44
Speaker 1: that movement gave us New York City Mayor, Rudy Giuliani.
5:52
Speaker 1: I'm Ben Mattahaffrey. This is the Staten Island problem. Our
5:56
Speaker 1: final episode Revenge of the Forgotten Borough. Okay, so let's rewind.
6:12
Speaker 1: I want to focus in on the time leading up
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Speaker 1: to that nineteen ninety three election because I realized that
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Speaker 1: Rudy Giuliani and Staten Island Secession were being driven by
6:20
Speaker 1: the same engine, and I wanted to understand what that
6:24
Speaker 1: engine was.
6:25
Speaker 8: The practice of politics in this city stinks.
6:28
Speaker 11: I mean it is.
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Speaker 8: It is an old fashioned way of practicing politics.
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Speaker 1: America. First met Rudy Giuliani as a crusader who took
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Speaker 1: on the mob. As US Attorney for the Southern District
6:40
Speaker 1: of New York. He went after corruption everywhere on Wall
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Speaker 1: Street and especially in New York City government.
6:46
Speaker 8: Crooked politicians and crooked bosses of political organizations that are
6:51
Speaker 8: running counties that are in dire need of honest, decent
6:54
Speaker 8: people running those counties who are raping those counties for
6:56
Speaker 8: their own advantage.
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Speaker 1: And one of the very first people encouraging Giuliani to
7:01
Speaker 1: consider running for a higher office was Staten Island's borough president,
7:06
Speaker 1: Guy mulin Aiy.
7:08
Speaker 11: I think that they had a special kind of relationship
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Speaker 11: with friendship. It went beyond friendship. It was like extended family.
7:17
Speaker 1: Randy Mastro worked with Giuliani in the US Attorney's office
7:21
Speaker 1: and later as his first deputy mayor, and he witnessed
7:24
Speaker 1: Mollinari's relationship with Giuliani firsthand.
7:27
Speaker 11: A lot of similarities and backgrounds. Italian Americans, working class
7:32
Speaker 11: family backgrounds shared a lot of the same values.
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Speaker 1: Giuliani was born in Brooklyn. He was a very serious child.
7:42
Speaker 1: He would sit on his front stoop and read while
7:44
Speaker 1: the other kids played stickball. He started the opera club
7:47
Speaker 1: in high school. He wanted to be a priest. His
7:51
Speaker 1: college girlfriend remembered quote he liked to say, Rudolph William
7:55
Speaker 1: Louis Giuliani the third the first Italian Catholic president of
8:00
Speaker 1: the United States. Mollinary was with Giuliani from the very beginning.
8:06
Speaker 1: The day Giuliani announced his first mayoral run in nineteen
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Speaker 1: eighty nine, it was Mollinary who went to all five
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Speaker 1: boroughs with him, making introductions. Part of what they shared
8:16
Speaker 1: was an outer borough view of the city. Both were
8:19
Speaker 1: familiar with the politics of white people living on the periphery,
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Speaker 1: and while some Staten Islanders were trying to leave the
8:26
Speaker 1: city entirely, Mollinary was looking for someone who could remake
8:30
Speaker 1: it in Staten Island's image.
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Speaker 11: I think that there was definitely a sense in both
8:38
Speaker 11: their parts about being fair to every borough, and that
8:40
Speaker 11: Manhattan had probably been favored by many prior mayors.
8:45
Speaker 1: David Dinkins beat Giuliani during the mayoral election of nineteen
8:49
Speaker 1: eighty nine and became the city's first black mayor. But
8:52
Speaker 1: that election had been a warning sign to liberals in
8:54
Speaker 1: New York. Giuliani had lost by the slimmest margin of
8:59
Speaker 1: any mayoral race since nineteen oh five. His supporters were angry.
9:04
Speaker 1: They demanded a recount.
9:10
Speaker 11: Please relax and just listen.
9:14
Speaker 12: He will be.
9:18
Speaker 11: Wait, There's plenty of time.
9:23
Speaker 13: The first political campaign I covered in New York City
9:25
Speaker 13: was Rudy Giuliani's second run from very successful run, and
9:30
Speaker 13: I went with him on a to Staten Island.
9:33
Speaker 1: What oh yeah. Malcolm Gladwell, reporter covering New York for
9:37
Speaker 1: The Washington Post back then, who somehow waited until our
9:41
Speaker 1: final episode to reveal to me that he had met
9:43
Speaker 1: Giuliani and gone to Staten Island with him. In nineteen
9:46
Speaker 1: ninety three, he wrote about it in an article called
9:49
Speaker 1: Rudy Giuliani's Whispered Revolt.
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Speaker 13: I spent the day on a We started in the morning,
9:55
Speaker 13: we took the you know, got in the cavalcade, we
9:57
Speaker 13: went over the bridge, and I ended up came back
9:59
Speaker 13: late at night, and he did, you know, he did
10:01
Speaker 13: events all throughout the day, and it was very clear
10:04
Speaker 13: that like these were his people, even though he's a
10:08
Speaker 13: form me, he's Flatbush, he's not, you know, he's an Italian,
10:11
Speaker 13: but they were. It's the italianness, and it's a sense
10:14
Speaker 13: of grievance.
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Speaker 1: It's it's the people who resent Manhattan.
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Speaker 13: Resent Manhattan. And the kind of and also his close affiliation.
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Speaker 14: With the police.
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Speaker 13: It's such a kind of cop guy, and that is
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Speaker 13: that set down as Cop Central.
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Speaker 1: Giuliani spoke to exactly the kind of person who might
10:30
Speaker 1: want to secede from New York. He promised to do
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Speaker 1: whatever it took to put New York City to order again.
10:36
Speaker 1: He would be Bruce Wayne to New York's Gotham as
10:39
Speaker 1: US attorney. He seemed to love, to publicly shame his
10:42
Speaker 1: victims with these dramatic purp walks. His message was that
10:47
Speaker 1: all the other mayors had been too tolerant. He promised
10:50
Speaker 1: a kind of illiberalism, zero tolerance.
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Speaker 13: But the thing about Rudy is that Rudy is not
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Speaker 13: fun right, He's not genteel, He's not sophisticated in the
11:03
Speaker 13: way that some of these other characters are. There's something
11:07
Speaker 13: angry and kind of mean and kind of course about him.
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Speaker 13: And coming into the New York City political scene for
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Speaker 13: the first time, he realizes he has to He realized
11:18
Speaker 13: is not going to he's himself at that point. It's
11:20
Speaker 13: not going to fly. It's too much of a departure.
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Speaker 13: So he has to kind of play it down, play
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Speaker 13: down his true essential roodiness.
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Speaker 1: For a few years now, I've had a question about
11:33
Speaker 1: that true essential roudiness. Is he the same guy now
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Speaker 1: as he was then? People used to think of him
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Speaker 1: as America's mayor, the guy we depended on during nine
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Speaker 1: to eleven, or the guy who cleaned up New York City.
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Speaker 1: They don't recognize that guy in Rudy today, standing in
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Speaker 1: the parking lot. Four seasons total landscaping, spreading lies about
11:52
Speaker 1: stolen elections. That's why I'm so interested in understanding the
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Speaker 1: Giuliani of long ago, because I think that actually he's
12:01
Speaker 1: always been the same Rudy, And there's a specific moment
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Speaker 1: back in the nineties when you could see it clearly.
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Speaker 1: One morning, a year before the ninety three election, Rudy
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Speaker 1: Giuliani and Guy Mullinery met up for a very faithful day.
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Speaker 1: The police union had organized a protest. They were angry
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Speaker 1: about a series of riots where they felt Mayor Dinkins
12:25
Speaker 1: had betrayed them Washington Heights and Crown Heights. They were
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Speaker 1: angry that he had a big plan to put more
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Speaker 1: civilian oversight on the police. So they gathered outside a
12:36
Speaker 1: place where they knew they'd get some attention.
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Speaker 7: It was a show, of course, on the steps of
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Speaker 7: New York City Hall. Ten thousand off duty cops banded
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Speaker 7: together in protest, set up and angry with a city
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Speaker 7: they claim doesn't back them up.
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Speaker 1: There were ten thousand off duty cops. Many were drunk,
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Speaker 1: and things started getting out of hand. They began to
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Speaker 1: climb on cars, chanting Dinkins must go. They held signs
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Speaker 1: with racist caricatures of Dinkins with huge lips and a
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Speaker 1: gigantic Afro, calling him a washroom attendant. They intimidated a
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Speaker 1: black councilwoman as she tried to cross the street. People
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Speaker 1: hurled racial epithets. Then they charged up the steps of
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Speaker 1: City Hall. A reporter told CBS what he'd seen.
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Speaker 10: They climbed the very steps of government and felt comfortable
13:31
Speaker 10: to call the mayor of the city a nigger. It's outrageous.
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Speaker 10: If David Duke had a police department, it would look
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Speaker 10: and sound like this group of people who assaulted our senses.
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Speaker 4: I was in city Hall at the time.
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Speaker 7: The mayor wasn't.
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Speaker 1: First deputy mayor at the time, Norman Stizel. Dinkins was
13:52
Speaker 1: actually uptown at a funeral, and so you're the highest
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Speaker 1: ranking person at city.
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Speaker 3: Hall, yes, I was.
14:00
Speaker 11: They decided to basically they were thinking about storming city Hall.
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Speaker 1: Police inside told Steizel they had an evacuation plan through
14:07
Speaker 1: an unused stable in the back. At some point in
14:13
Speaker 1: all this, Rudy Giuliani arrived at City Hall. The head
14:17
Speaker 1: of the police union asked him to try to calm
14:19
Speaker 1: things down. He said, he led a small group out
14:23
Speaker 1: of the main area and over to a protest outside
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Speaker 1: the plaza where there was a stage on a truck bed.
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Speaker 1: Guy Moulin Airy had already spoken there. Giuliani got up.
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Speaker 1: He'd seen the out of control rage and hate at
14:36
Speaker 1: Dinkins and had a choice calm things down or feed
14:41
Speaker 1: the fire. He chose the latter.
14:44
Speaker 2: The raven the burrale of the Police Department of the
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Speaker 2: City of New York is so low with one raven
14:51
Speaker 2: and one raven alone Ramon.
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Speaker 1: He said the move to increase oversight on the cops
15:00
Speaker 1: was just quote to protect David Dinkins's political ass. He
15:04
Speaker 1: said Dinkins's policies were quote bullshit. Steizele still inside City
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Speaker 1: Hall heard.
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Speaker 15: Everything, and there's no question on my mind that that's
15:17
Speaker 15: what he talked about.
15:18
Speaker 7: When he got up on the stage.
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Speaker 4: You could hear him.
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Speaker 16: It was, you know, right outside where we were, so.
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Speaker 1: I don't know, you felt he was inciting, Well, there
15:27
Speaker 1: was no question about it.
15:28
Speaker 14: Yeah.
15:35
Speaker 1: The rioters veered away from City Hall and blocked traffic
15:37
Speaker 1: on the Brooklyn Bridge. Instead, they threatened drivers. One rider
15:42
Speaker 1: kicked a New York Times reporter in the stomach. Another
15:45
Speaker 1: group of cops found a car with older black people
15:47
Speaker 1: inside and began to shove it back and forth. Dinkins
15:51
Speaker 1: was outraged.
15:53
Speaker 4: For Rudy Giuliani to.
15:56
Speaker 6: Urge them on.
15:56
Speaker 8: As it were, he demonstrates an irresponsibility on his behalf.
16:06
Speaker 1: I started having this weird feeling as I work on
16:08
Speaker 1: this series that I've think of as the flicker. Like
16:11
Speaker 1: when I'm riding the subway listening to Wu Tang. The
16:14
Speaker 1: cars have less graffiti, but they're basically the same tim cans,
16:19
Speaker 1: and sometimes something shifts and I feel like I'm looking
16:22
Speaker 1: at the world thirty years ago. The same thing happened
16:26
Speaker 1: when I watched what little tape remains of the riot.
16:29
Speaker 1: Something flickers and suddenly I feel like I'm looking at
16:32
Speaker 1: the twenty twenties. After the break, I want to take
16:37
Speaker 1: you to a rural part of Wisconsin that helped me
16:40
Speaker 1: understand why. Sometime in the year two thousand and seven,
17:00
Speaker 1: a political scientist living in Wisconsin decided to leave the
17:03
Speaker 1: city of Madison and start driving around the state.
17:08
Speaker 5: I knew that if I wanted understand how people make
17:11
Speaker 5: sense of politics, the best way to do that is
17:13
Speaker 5: to listen to them.
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Speaker 1: Catherine Kramer, professor at the University of Wisconsin.
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Speaker 5: There's something going on in these rural communities. That's very
17:23
Speaker 5: similar all across the state.
17:30
Speaker 1: She started hanging out at gas stations, athletic clubs, diners,
17:34
Speaker 1: any place she could find a civic association outside one
17:37
Speaker 1: of the big cities. She realized that she kept hearing
17:41
Speaker 1: the same conversation in all of them.
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Speaker 5: Like a simmering emotion, right, it's different from anger, and
17:51
Speaker 5: that it's just kind of this we might say, like
17:54
Speaker 5: a chip on your shoulder, a sense of like these
17:59
Speaker 5: people pissed me off. I'm trying to make you a
18:00
Speaker 5: nicer way of saying, but like those people piss me off,
18:03
Speaker 5: and they just don't understand me. Those people don't respect me.
18:06
Speaker 5: This sense of I'm not getting my fair share in
18:11
Speaker 5: like three important respects.
18:14
Speaker 1: Those three respects, Kramer says, our money, the feeling that
18:17
Speaker 1: all the jobs and resources are somewhere else, namely the
18:20
Speaker 1: citi's power, the idea that all the decisions are also
18:25
Speaker 1: made in the cities. And finally, respect, also something cities
18:30
Speaker 1: get more of than rural places. Together, this all adds
18:35
Speaker 1: up to a feeling resentment.
18:40
Speaker 5: It's not that they just don't understand us, they don't care,
18:43
Speaker 5: and they don't like us like they think we're not
18:46
Speaker 5: worth listening to because they think we're uneducated and backward
18:50
Speaker 5: and sexist and homophobic and what have you.
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Speaker 1: This feeling has always existed, country focating city folk, city
18:58
Speaker 1: folk thinking country folk are backwards. But what Kramer found
19:02
Speaker 1: is you could put numbers to it, and it had
19:05
Speaker 1: gotten a whole lot more intense starting in the nineteen seventies.
19:09
Speaker 1: And it wasn't just rural urban It was about anything
19:13
Speaker 1: on the periphery of the big cities, which were only
19:15
Speaker 1: getting bigger.
19:17
Speaker 17: These sentiments show up in so many places and parts
19:22
Speaker 17: of our population, right that sense of low boiling resentment
19:29
Speaker 17: towards the people in charge, like who doesn't feel that?
19:35
Speaker 17: Right now?
19:38
Speaker 1: Secession was the manifestation of that same feeling, and it
19:42
Speaker 1: expressed itself in two ways. A vote for secession and
19:46
Speaker 1: a vote for Giuliani on election night after they'd lost.
19:52
Speaker 1: That had been very clear to the Dincoin's campaign.
19:55
Speaker 4: What defeated us was the succession issue on the ballot
19:58
Speaker 4: at Stanton Island, which stimulated churn out there way out
20:02
Speaker 4: of proportion. Would exp roal trentot.
20:05
Speaker 1: So many people had come out to vote for secession
20:07
Speaker 1: on Staten Island way more more than had voted in
20:10
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine. In eighty two percent of the people
20:13
Speaker 1: on Staten Island voted for Giuliani. The vote from the
20:18
Speaker 1: forgotten borough is a big part of how we got
20:21
Speaker 1: Mayor Giuliani, the first Republican mayor of New York City
20:24
Speaker 1: in decades, taking the stage at the New York Hilt
20:27
Speaker 1: him I'm.
20:28
Speaker 3: Standing before you as the next mayor of New York City.
20:38
Speaker 1: The next day, Dinkins's chief political officer said, quote, the
20:42
Speaker 1: only surprise, as far as I am concerned, was the
20:45
Speaker 1: size of the Staten Island numbers. You can show what
20:48
Speaker 1: I consider minor increases for Rudy across the board, but
20:51
Speaker 1: not major ones. If you fit Staten Island into the mix,
20:55
Speaker 1: there is the difference. Staten Island was part of a
21:02
Speaker 1: movement of people saying we don't believe the sum is
21:05
Speaker 1: greater than the parts, and we'd like to go our
21:07
Speaker 1: own way. Actually, it was the most outer borough of
21:10
Speaker 1: the outer boroughs saying they wanted to be the center,
21:13
Speaker 1: not the periphery. For some it was absolutely about race,
21:17
Speaker 1: but it was also about respect, about geography. It was
21:22
Speaker 1: about not wanting to be the dump anymore, and they
21:24
Speaker 1: started a movement that changed their reality by electing a
21:28
Speaker 1: leader who was outer Borough himself, who understood what it
21:32
Speaker 1: meant to be on the periphery and both hate and
21:35
Speaker 1: need the center. Giuliani made the ferry free. He invested
21:40
Speaker 1: almost half a billion dollars in the Staten Island waterfront.
21:44
Speaker 1: He got them that baseball park I used to go
21:46
Speaker 1: to in the summers when I just moved to New
21:48
Speaker 1: York City. But the biggest thing he gave them is
21:51
Speaker 1: that he and Guy Mullinery managed to close the dump.
21:55
Speaker 1: On March twenty second, two thousand and one, the last
21:58
Speaker 1: barge of trash sailed out for fresh kills. Giuliani stood
22:03
Speaker 1: on his porch and saluted as it passed. The dump was,
22:07
Speaker 1: at that point the largest man made object on earth.
22:11
Speaker 8: The process of Staten Island bearing the burden of the
22:13
Speaker 8: rest of the city's garbage was inequitable, and now it's
22:17
Speaker 8: over for good.
22:20
Speaker 1: For the rest of the city, particularly it's black and
22:23
Speaker 1: brown residents, the results were more mixed. There was a
22:26
Speaker 1: viciousness to his efforts to clean up the city. Homeless
22:30
Speaker 1: people were denied shelter or forced to pay. Giuliani often
22:33
Speaker 1: refused to meet with black leaders. Cops were sent out
22:36
Speaker 1: to quote empty the streets. Executives at the local public
22:40
Speaker 1: radio station said that at some point they heard Juliani
22:43
Speaker 1: say that his goal was to get poor people to
22:46
Speaker 1: leave New York. Today we call that self deporting. Frank Sapola,
22:52
Speaker 1: the cable news guy, remembers you couldn't challenge him on
22:54
Speaker 1: any of it.
22:56
Speaker 3: I had screaming arguments with him at press conference because
22:59
Speaker 3: I would ask a question and he would say, Ah,
23:01
Speaker 3: that's a stupid question.
23:03
Speaker 10: I said, according to who I'm asking the question, and
23:05
Speaker 10: I wasn't the only one.
23:06
Speaker 14: He would just look at reporters and say, you're an idiot.
23:08
Speaker 4: That's a stupid I'm not going to answer that stupid question.
23:13
Speaker 1: And there was another New Yorker, I'm guessing you're familiar with,
23:17
Speaker 1: who grew up in the outer boroughs too, and thought,
23:20
Speaker 1: this is what a great leader looks like.
23:24
Speaker 3: Donald Trump announcing tonight the formation tomorrow of a committee
23:29
Speaker 3: to look into the possibility of his running for the
23:31
Speaker 3: presidency of the United States.
23:35
Speaker 1: This is a clip from Larry King Live in nineteen
23:38
Speaker 1: ninety nine, one of the first times Trump flirts with
23:41
Speaker 1: running for president. That year, Hillary Clinton was gearing up
23:45
Speaker 1: for her race against Giuliani from New York Senator, what
23:49
Speaker 1: do you.
23:49
Speaker 3: Make of the Hillary Julian here. I know you're a
23:51
Speaker 3: big fan of Juliani.
23:53
Speaker 2: I am, and I like her very much. But I
23:54
Speaker 2: think Rudy and as I said before, he's been the
23:56
Speaker 2: greatest mayor in the history of the city of Mire
23:59
Speaker 2: and people maybe some people don't like him and some
24:01
Speaker 2: people love him totally. I happen to be in love
24:04
Speaker 2: because the guy, not because I love Rudy, because he's
24:07
Speaker 2: done an incredible job.
24:08
Speaker 10: He's the best.
24:09
Speaker 2: I mean, he's just done a great job.
24:12
Speaker 1: Trump grew up in Queens in an environment a lot
24:15
Speaker 1: like Giuliani, wanting, like Giuliani, to put his mark on Manhattan,
24:19
Speaker 1: to build the biggest towers and put his name on them,
24:22
Speaker 1: to be respected, even though it would always elude him.
24:27
Speaker 1: Giuliani was the model.
24:30
Speaker 2: I mean the polls generally speaking. National Inquiry did a
24:33
Speaker 2: poll that's unbelievable, that says a win, that you beat
24:36
Speaker 2: everybody right into the White House.
24:48
Speaker 1: When Rudy Giuliani took the stage at the New York
24:50
Speaker 1: Hilton to celebrate his election, it was the same stage
24:53
Speaker 1: Donald Trump would take thirty three years later, celebrating his presidency, the.
24:59
Speaker 2: Forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten
25:03
Speaker 2: no longer.
25:06
Speaker 1: There's a history to that term forgotten, the forgotten borough,
25:11
Speaker 1: the forgotten men and women. Around the time in the
25:14
Speaker 1: middle of the twentieth century that the civil rights movement
25:16
Speaker 1: had really picked up, there had been a shift, and
25:19
Speaker 1: white middle class and working class people started thinking of
25:23
Speaker 1: themselves as forgotten, that they had been left behind in
25:26
Speaker 1: the name of progress. Those are the threads that political
25:30
Speaker 1: scientist Katharine Kramer was teasing a part in Wisconsin, and
25:33
Speaker 1: she wrote it up in a book about all this,
25:35
Speaker 1: called The Politics of Resentment. That book came out in
25:39
Speaker 1: March twenty sixteen, eight months before Trump got elected, riding
25:43
Speaker 1: a wave that looked exactly like what she described. An
25:48
Speaker 1: economic geographer, picking up on some of what Kramer had discovered,
25:52
Speaker 1: wrote what is, to my mind, one of the most
25:54
Speaker 1: satisfying explanations for Trump's election. It's an essay called the
25:58
Speaker 1: Rise of Populism and the Revenge of the Places that
26:01
Speaker 1: Don't Matter, and it points out that you might expect
26:05
Speaker 1: a populism of resentment to come from the disenfranchised, the
26:09
Speaker 1: very poor or ethnic and racial minorities, to put it
26:12
Speaker 1: in his terms, among the people that don't matter. But
26:17
Speaker 1: that's not what happened. It was the places that don't matter,
26:22
Speaker 1: even the wealthy people there who voted for populism. And
26:27
Speaker 1: that same pattern held all around the world. The forgotten places,
26:33
Speaker 1: forgotten no longer.
26:35
Speaker 16: The forgotten borough.
26:36
Speaker 14: I don't know.
26:37
Speaker 5: I think we just might get rid of that nickname.
26:41
Speaker 1: A vote for Giuliani in nineteen ninety three is not
26:44
Speaker 1: the same as a vote for Trump in twenty sixteen.
26:46
Speaker 1: But they share that engine. There is some kind of
26:50
Speaker 1: deep cosmic tie between these men, these movements, these places,
26:56
Speaker 1: in these times. Because twenty nine years after Giuliani riled
27:01
Speaker 1: up a group of drunk, angry cops at City Hall,
27:04
Speaker 1: he did the same thing, but this time as someone
27:08
Speaker 1: in Trump's corner.
27:10
Speaker 14: But Gus where right. A lot of them will go
27:13
Speaker 14: to jail, So let's have trial by combat.
27:24
Speaker 1: To some who'd been in New York in nineteen ninety two,
27:27
Speaker 1: what unfolded at the Capitol on January sixth, twenty twenty
27:30
Speaker 1: one all seemed very familiar.
27:33
Speaker 16: Absolutely. There was much chatter among the Dinkins alumni of
27:40
Speaker 16: about three parallel.
27:42
Speaker 1: We've seen this before, Yeah, Marcia Smith, who worked with
27:47
Speaker 1: David Dinkins.
27:49
Speaker 11: It's so parallel.
27:51
Speaker 16: You know, you're talking about the first black mayor and
27:53
Speaker 16: the reaction to that, the first black president and the
27:55
Speaker 16: reaction to that though, you know, and it's a real reaction,
27:58
Speaker 16: you know, and it's it is emotional, you know, it
28:01
Speaker 16: literally is psychological emotional. Who gets to be in this position?
28:07
Speaker 16: What's fair and what's not? Who gets to wheel power,
28:11
Speaker 16: who doesn't.
28:13
Speaker 1: It's all here in seed form in the nineteen nineties
28:16
Speaker 1: in New York City. It's the story of the past decade,
28:21
Speaker 1: thirty years ago.
28:23
Speaker 14: So how does it end?
28:40
Speaker 1: This whole series has been about where we put our
28:43
Speaker 1: trash literally and metaphorically. So as we reached the end
28:47
Speaker 1: of it, my producer Lucy Sullivan and I decided we
28:51
Speaker 1: had to make a pilgrimage. So I wish it were
28:54
Speaker 1: a little warmer, but I'm happy that it's going to
28:56
Speaker 1: be like sunny up.
28:57
Speaker 14: Yeah, Chris, we.
28:59
Speaker 1: Were going to Fresh Kills, once the biggest landfill in
29:02
Speaker 1: the world. Now it's on its way to becoming one
29:05
Speaker 1: of the largest parks in the city. We brought its
29:08
Speaker 1: biggest fan with us, the anthropologist in residence at the
29:12
Speaker 1: New York City Department of Sanitation, Robin Nagel. Of the
29:16
Speaker 1: many reasons I love this city, the fact that this
29:19
Speaker 1: position exists has got to be top five.
29:22
Speaker 11: Real treat about you all are my You're like giving
29:26
Speaker 11: me a gift.
29:27
Speaker 1: Herea We met with two administrators for the park, Chris
29:32
Speaker 1: Ricker and Mark Murphy. We all drove out to one
29:35
Speaker 1: part of the park called the North Mound. Chris and
29:38
Speaker 1: Mark are native Staten Islanders and they care a lot
29:41
Speaker 1: about the transformation of this place. Do you remember what
29:44
Speaker 1: you thought about it when you were growing up, Like,
29:46
Speaker 1: how did you feel about the dump?
29:49
Speaker 15: Well, we don't call it to dump, we call it
29:50
Speaker 15: the landfill, but we have our dump jar downstairs. You
29:54
Speaker 15: put a dollar in it when everything somebody says you
29:57
Speaker 15: thank you. This was like the dark side of the.
30:00
Speaker 14: Moon and your parents.
30:02
Speaker 15: My dad would say to me, look, go, you know,
30:04
Speaker 15: wed garbage out in the gar I clean the garbage out,
30:06
Speaker 15: take it out to the landfill. And if you say,
30:09
Speaker 15: takes that and you'd throw it in the back of
30:11
Speaker 15: the station wagon.
30:11
Speaker 14: You drive out.
30:12
Speaker 15: And it was just this fast place with telephone poles
30:16
Speaker 15: in the ground, and ropes on them, and you'd tied
30:18
Speaker 15: around the stuff in your car and you would drive away.
30:20
Speaker 15: It would all fly out wow, and you'd close the
30:23
Speaker 15: doors and you wouldn't look back because number One, you
30:25
Speaker 15: wanted to get out of that place, but it was
30:27
Speaker 15: like where everything you didn't want went.
30:32
Speaker 1: It's clear that this is going to be a beautiful park.
30:35
Speaker 1: It's not fully open to the public yet. Rolling hills
30:39
Speaker 1: are dotted with little pipes pumping methane out of the
30:41
Speaker 1: trash underneath to make it safe for the public. Benches
30:45
Speaker 1: and paths, wide open spaces, green grass, but not many trees.
30:50
Speaker 1: Turns out you can't plant things with deep roots on garbage.
30:55
Speaker 1: I turned to my left on top of the mountain
30:57
Speaker 1: of buried trash, and in the clear distance I saw
31:00
Speaker 1: the buildings of Manhattan gleaming. Some day people are going
31:04
Speaker 1: to go out of their way to come to this place.
31:09
Speaker 1: Can you what are we standing on top of right now?
31:13
Speaker 18: So, as an anthropologist, we're standing on the story of
31:15
Speaker 18: New York City. If you lived here between nineteen forty
31:18
Speaker 18: eight and two thousand and one, you're here somewhere, maybe
31:21
Speaker 18: not in this exact mount but some piece of you
31:24
Speaker 18: even if you just passed through, some piece of you
31:26
Speaker 18: is underneath us. And this is an archaeologist dream in
31:31
Speaker 18: five hundred years, let's say, like long in the future,
31:35
Speaker 18: just the daily lives of normal folks, people who's they
31:41
Speaker 18: don't become famous, they don't make headlines, but their material
31:46
Speaker 18: record is under our feet.
31:49
Speaker 1: Osprey circled overhead and then Robin said something that I've
31:53
Speaker 1: been thinking about ever since.
31:56
Speaker 19: Someday, to my regret, people won't even know that they're
32:00
Speaker 19: standing on mounts of garbage. It's just this extraordinary green space,
32:04
Speaker 19: which I think is its future. Because we don't remember
32:07
Speaker 19: that Orchard Beach and the seventy ninth Street boat Base
32:10
Speaker 19: and all of Lower Manhattan from a Pearl Street to
32:12
Speaker 19: the water is built on phil We don't remember that
32:15
Speaker 19: we walk on our garbage history all the time.
32:25
Speaker 1: This whole series, I've been thinking about an unresolved tension
32:28
Speaker 1: at the heart of this country. The idea that every
32:31
Speaker 1: person is equal and deserves an equal vote is at
32:34
Speaker 1: odds with the way our government's actually built. That every
32:38
Speaker 1: state is equal and deserves equal representation, regardless of how
32:42
Speaker 1: many people live. There are we a country of places
32:46
Speaker 1: or of people? This is a question that New York
32:49
Speaker 1: City resolved in nineteen eighty nine. Remember, shutting down the
32:54
Speaker 1: Board of Estimate was like killing the electoral College in
32:56
Speaker 1: the Senate. In one fell swoop, New York City became
33:00
Speaker 1: a democracy of people and not of place. But when
33:04
Speaker 1: they did, they missed a crucial fact. Place does actually matter.
33:10
Speaker 1: The politics of resentment are a politics of place and remoteness.
33:15
Speaker 1: And if you don't attend to that, people elect a
33:18
Speaker 1: strong man who favors them over others. You get Giuliani,
33:24
Speaker 1: you get Trump, the revenge of the places that don't matter.
33:29
Speaker 1: The reality is we're stuck together, and if we don't
33:32
Speaker 1: want to keep getting periodically rocked by the forgotten places,
33:37
Speaker 1: we're left with one option. Figure out a news story
33:40
Speaker 1: we can tell that makes this whole place make sense again,
33:45
Speaker 1: that remembers all of it and everyone. And so now,
33:56
Speaker 1: in closing, let me share with you just one last
34:00
Speaker 1: excellent staten Isle In fact, one day, decades after Woody
34:04
Speaker 1: Guthrie died, his daughter Nora got a call. It was
34:07
Speaker 1: her father's manager, and he.
34:09
Speaker 4: Said, you know, I'm going to retire soon, so I
34:12
Speaker 4: need someone to come in and kind of learn this
34:15
Speaker 4: stuff of there's stuff here of your father's boxes of stuff.
34:20
Speaker 4: So I went in and then I pulled out a
34:22
Speaker 4: three whole notebook and is filled with lyrics, just like
34:26
Speaker 4: one hundred and fifty, page after page after page, just
34:29
Speaker 4: turning the page. And then there's this land. And I
34:35
Speaker 4: took it out of the book. I said, have you
34:37
Speaker 4: ever seen it? And he said no, No one had
34:41
Speaker 4: opened these boxes for forty years.
34:46
Speaker 1: This Land is Your Land is basically the unofficial national anthem.
34:50
Speaker 1: Nora discovered that her dad had written it soon after
34:53
Speaker 1: he first arrived in New York in nineteen forty.
34:57
Speaker 4: He's basically describing his trip from California to the New
35:01
Speaker 4: York Island.
35:04
Speaker 1: That is the crucial lyric, the very first couplet, this
35:08
Speaker 1: Land is your land, this Land is Myland, from California
35:12
Speaker 1: to the New York Island. But looking at that page
35:16
Speaker 1: of his notebook, Nora realized that's not the line he
35:20
Speaker 1: originally wrote.
35:25
Speaker 4: The original lyric had from California to Staten Island. Why
35:34
Speaker 4: I have no idea.
35:37
Speaker 1: The most crucial part of the first draft of probably
35:40
Speaker 1: the most famous song in American history goes from California
35:45
Speaker 1: to the Staten Island and then he crossed it out
35:50
Speaker 1: and wrote another version, the one we all know. Word
35:54
Speaker 1: of this got out in the nineteen nineties, around the
35:56
Speaker 1: time of secession.
35:58
Speaker 4: I did have a group of people come many years
36:02
Speaker 4: ago from Staten Island and petitioned me to go back
36:07
Speaker 4: to the original lyric. They wanted Staten Island you know,
36:11
Speaker 4: Are you serious? I'm serious. They were like, so, why
36:14
Speaker 4: did he cross out this Staten Islander? I don't know.
36:18
Speaker 4: And do you think we could get it back? I
36:23
Speaker 4: don't think so. By that point, it has already been
36:27
Speaker 4: published and was widely known.
36:33
Speaker 1: Staten Islanders they love a petition and hate being forgotten,
36:38
Speaker 1: and honestly, who doesn't. So since the New York State
36:41
Speaker 1: Legislature decided they weren't going to let Staten Island go
36:44
Speaker 1: its own way, I think it's the least we can
36:46
Speaker 1: do to put them back in the song. I asked
36:51
Speaker 1: my friend Sam Lewis and Nashville to record it for us.
36:55
Speaker 6: This land is your land, This land is miland Film,
37:02
Speaker 6: California to the stand Island, from the River Ys to
37:11
Speaker 6: the Golf Stream water, this land was made and me
37:21
Speaker 6: is I was walking Drivon of Highway.
37:27
Speaker 12: I solved me Laddie and Liz Kyoway. I saw below
37:35
Speaker 12: me that Golden Valley this Land was made.
37:46
Speaker 1: The Staten Island Problem is written and reported by me
37:48
Speaker 1: Ben Matt of Haffrey. He was produced by Lucy Sullivan
37:52
Speaker 1: with Nina Bird Lawrence. Our editor is Karen Schakerji. Our
37:55
Speaker 1: executive producer is Jacob Smith. Fact checking by Sam Russick,
38:00
Speaker 1: Sound design and mastering by Jake Gorsky. Original music by
38:03
Speaker 1: Stellwagen Sinfinet, Luis Garra and Jake Gorsky. Special thanks to
38:08
Speaker 1: Todd Reynolds for his the solution from the album Outer Borrow,
38:12
Speaker 1: and thanks of course to Malcolm Gladwell. So many people
38:17
Speaker 1: shared their time and expertise with me as I made
38:19
Speaker 1: this series. You don't hear all their voices, but it
38:22
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been possible without them. Thanks in particular to
38:26
Speaker 1: Derek Alvez, Chris Bauer, Chris Beacham, Ed Burke, Jerry Camarada,
38:31
Speaker 1: Gretchen Dikstra, Art Eisenberg, Richard Emery, Ray Fasano, Fernando Ferrer,
38:37
Speaker 1: Ken gold, Eric Lane, Jill Lapour, Thomas Main, Thomas Matteo,
38:43
Speaker 1: Chris McNichol, Marty Melosi, Susan Mulineri, Patrick Nugent, Carol o'claraken,
38:49
Speaker 1: Philip Pappis, Jose Ramirez, Garoffalo, David Schleicher, Eric Vitaliano, Joseph Vederetti,
38:57
Speaker 1: and Kevin Wade. Several archivists were, as always, the backbone
39:01
Speaker 1: of this story. Huge huge thanks to James Kaser and
39:05
Speaker 1: Rebecca Lambert at the College of Staten Island Archives, to
39:08
Speaker 1: Danny Spardella w n y c Into the whole staff
39:12
Speaker 1: of the New York City Department of Records and Information
39:14
Speaker 1: Services at Pushkin. Thanks to Staten Island's own Morgan Ratner,
39:19
Speaker 1: and to Greta Cone, Jake Flanagan, Eric Sandler, Kira Posey,
39:23
Speaker 1: Jordan McMillan, and Grace Ross. And thanks also to Julia
39:29
Speaker 1: Conrad for teaching me to love this city and its
39:32
Speaker 1: history as much as she does. I'm ben Matafaffrey is
39:39
Speaker 1: Land issue.
39:42
Speaker 6: This land is maland from Caliphone.
39:48
Speaker 11: To this.
39:52
Speaker 14: On the river foes.
39:55
Speaker 6: Through the ghost stream world, this land mavy.
40:10
Speaker 14: I don't do anything A fact