Shaun Richman

March 13, 2005July 17, 2023

Kitty

I’m haunted by Kitty Genovese, who was murdered 41 years ago, on March 13, 1964. The New York Times reported at the time:

For more than half an hour 38 respectable, law-abiding citizens in Queens watched a killer stalk and stab a woman in three separate attacks in Kew Gardens.

The lede was slightly exaggerated but close enough to the truth to make the neighborhood notorious. You’ve probably read something about the case, and, if not, you can “Google it”. Kitty’s murder has been used as a touchstone or plot point in movies, books, teevee shows and even a famous comic book. It’s been tossed around like a football in various political debates and psychological theories. It’s easy to overlook the life of the young woman who died.

Although, I’d known about this crime since I was taught about it in high school, I, like many people, assumed that it took place in Manhattan, surrounded by high-rise apartment buildings. You really need to walk around Kew Gardens to realize how shocking it is, and surely was then, that such a crime could take place here. Kew Gardens is a neighborhood of small shops, single family houses and a scattered handful of apartment buildings that go no higher than six stories. People in the neighborhood have a “nodding” relationship with each other, if not always actual friendships.

I can imagine living in the neighborhood with Kitty, who was young, short, tomboyish, independent, tough, plucky and pretty cute, actually. I could imagine having a crush on her, and hoping to “bump into” her at the supermarket or the local bar. I can imagine the gut-wrenching hole she would leave in the neighborhood’s street scene.

Last year, being the 40th anniversary of the crime, caused many media outlets, including the Times, to revisit the old story and many of the surviving witnesses. A key part of the story was Kitty’s “roommate,” Mary Ann Zielonko, who had the grim task of identifying the body, and who faded from the original story. Emboldened, I guess, by 35 years of gay liberation and probably just sick-to-death of being white-washed from the story, Mary Ann finally came out as Kitty’s lover. It’s hard to believe that the portrait of Kitty Genovese has been so incomplete for so long. This begs many questions. Was the attack a hate crime? (The more chilling probability is that it was a completely random attack by a psycho-sexual serial killer). Did her neighbors know about her sexuality? (Could residents of Kew Gardens in 1964 wrap their brains around homosexuality?). Was this the reason no one called for help? (Could neighbors distinguish her cries from the typical bar fights at the Old Bailey?).

Forty-one years later, Kew Gardens residents understand better than most New Yorkers that we have an obligation to be our brother’s and sister’s keeper. The “Eyes” on the street will monitor lover’s spats, unaccompanied children, reckless drivers – and watch for the first sign of real trouble, often calling the police before that first sign. We’re trying to live down the Kitty Genovese experience. I don’t think it’s something we should try to forget. We should keep Kitty Genovese in our minds as we actively and consciously try to progress beyond big city alienation. It could have happened anywhere, but it did happen here.

March 11, 2005July 17, 2023

Wal-Mart Free NYC

Vornado Realty has dropped Wal-Mart from its Rego Park development plans. This happened the night after Newsday published my letter, so clearly I was the straw that broke the camel’s back. In all seriousness, the plan was killed by some very effective, aggressive lobbying by the city’s labor unions, particularly UFCW 1500 and the Central Labor Council. The initial plans for that failed Wal-Mart were announced in December, and the plan was dead by late February. In that short time, organized community opposition in the form of coalitions of small business, civic and religious activists, students and shoppers did not have a chance to develop. They are still sorely needed. Wal-Mart has already announced plans to move into Staten Island and to beef up their presence on Long Island.

The Wal-Mart Free NYC Coalition has launched an excellent website full of resources so that you can recruit your civic and activist organizations into the fight to keep Wal-Mart out of our city. I urge you to visit the website and and join the coalition. Also, be sure to join SEIU’s Purple Ocean membership organization, dedicated to fighting Wal-Mart on the national level.

March 9, 2005July 17, 2023

Repealing the 20th Century

The Republicans can’t help themselves. Dominating all branches of the federal government, and bolstered by decades of anti-government, pro-market rhetoric, they are actively repealing the 20th century. With veto-proof majorities, and no strong opposition from the Democrats, they are in the silly position of being unstoppable, even when they’d probably rather lose a vote.

As policy, a national sales tax is more useful as a wedge issue, one of those “class warfare” issues that they keep beat the hapless Democrats over the head with. It’s not actually a sensible policy for government or economy. Nevertheless, Alan Greenspan recently came out in favor of a modified consumption tax. At what point does Wall Street realize that Greenspan is not some grand wizard of economics, but really just a partisan hack? When Clinton was president, Greenspan would constantly mumble and sputter warnings about cutting spending and paying down the nation’s debt and send the bond markets into turmoil whenever Clinton didn’t do as Greenspan would say. Suddenly, with Bush as president, Greenspan feels that enormous budget deficits and a weakening dollar have their upsides. He likewise agrees with Bush that Social Security is in immediate crisis and that the federal government should move away from a system that taxes income towards one that taxes spending, which anyone who can do basic math knows is deeply regressive and taxes the poor at a higher rate than the rich.

Greenspan’s mumbles were translated thusly:

“Many economists believe that a consumption tax would be best from the perspective of promoting economic growth – particularly if one were designing a system from scratch – because a consumption tax is likely to favor saving and capital formation.”

The only people who will be able to “save” money under this scheme would be the wealthy, who are being aided by the government in the creation of financial dynasties. Working people can’t save money because our wages are going down, or not keeping up with inflation. We’re losing purchasing power, which is why so many working and middle class families are so deeply in debt to credit cards and other financiers: we borrow in order to live the lives that our parents could afford through their real wages. It’s no wonder personal bankruptcy is on the rise.

But the Republicans want to do repeal bankruptcy protection, too! The Senate is poised to pass a bill that denies bankruptcy protection to millions and makes the terms much more putative for those who still qualify. This is obviously bad policy, as all the Senators who will vote for it surely know. But, they’ve all been bought and paid for by the financial industry. This is an example of that basic flaw in capitalism: the principle that everyone acting in their own selfish interest will somehow produce what’s best for society as a whole. Of course the credit industry wants to protect its investments and has the political power to do so, but if they plunge us into a “debt-peonage” society, how many consumers will be able to afford to carry their credit cards anymore?

There is a school of thought, espoused most prominently by William Greider, that global capitalism is in for a day of reckoning when falling wages and crippling debt finally break the backs of the millions of American consumers whose very consumption fuels the global economy, and we can no longer afford to buy, buy, buy in the numbers that the system desperately needs. I’m not one for doosmday predictions about capitalism. We Marxists have been predicting the “imminent” demise of industrial capitalism for almost as long as there has been industrial capitalism. It’s a remarkably resilient system – that’s its strength. It is however, unfair and globally produces misery for many more than it benefits. The falling consumption of Americans is more likely to be supplanted by China’s sleeping giant than to cause the machinery of capitalism to collapse. The system will soldier on, even if the American working class becomes a peasant class. Those wealthy dynasties and the politicians they buy had better hide the guillotines, though.

March 5, 2005July 17, 2023

The World of Tomorrow

I have a geeky affinity for World’s Fairs that’s a tad anachronistic for a red. World’s Fair geeks are a bit like Disney fans or Michael Jackson supporters: optimistic naifs who believe in all that is good, pure and innocent and who view the future through rose-colored glasses. At their peak, World’s Fairs were heavily commercialized, globally competitive and naively focused on different themes of progress through technology. That’s why I find them so attractive.

The roots of my World’s Fair obsession lie in my last semester at Queens College, which, due to my dedication to activism over education was an autumn super-senior semester. The year was 2001. I had finished my courses in Labor Studies and Journalism, and budget cuts prevented me from taking that last Economics course, “Economics of the Labor Force,” (what the hell kind of economy would we have without labor?) that would have earned me a second Associates degree, so all I had left was to burn through 15 elective credits. I had fun and took art classes and studied urban planning, a budding interest at the time.

The Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 is a hallmark of urban planning. It was the first World’s Fair held in America, and its theme center, the “White City,” a collection of gleaming white buildings of uniform height and roman architecture inspired civic leaders to ask “Why don’t our cities look like that?” Developed by disparate market forces, American cities lacked the thematic unity of European cities like Versailles and Dresden. The World’s Fair inspired cities to consider zoning laws that would emphasize aesthetics as well as practical usage. World’s Fairs continue to be influential on American society through the 1939 New York World’s Fair.

The world as we know it changed forever two weeks into my final semester in college. Campus lore has it that dozens of students and faculty gathered below the Goodman-Chaney-Schwerner clocktower on Tuesday, September the 11th, and watched the Twin Towers collapse on the horizon. I wouldn’t know. I didn’t leave my basement for a week.

When I returned to campus, I began reading about the 1939 World’s Fair, New York’s first. The most striking physical element of the fair was its theme center: two perfect geometrical shapes in art deco style, the Trylon and Perisphere. The Perisphere was a 300 foot high globe, inside of which were held presentations on “the World of Tomorrow.” The Trylon was a three-sided spike that rose 700 feet in the air. It was a skyscraper, visible from Manhattan.

It is immediately reassuring, in a perverse way, to read of a skyscraper – a landmark – that was here and then gone. That is New York, after all. It’s always changing. It’s amazing that so many of us claim to love it. Love what? The memories of what used to be?

Beyond the iconography, the 1939 World’s Fair featured more of that naive faith in constant advancement through technology that is all the more shocking and enviable since it came right before the worst horrors of the century. Corporate exhibits extolled the virtues of automation, which would provide us all with more leisure. General Motors presented a working model of the city of the future (which looked a lot like Brasilia) in which cars and highways would zip us through our commutes. Television was publicly unveiled and promised to be the most amazing educational tool man had ever created. The people who went to the World’s Fair could not imagine that such inventions could have downsides. They certainly couldn’t imagine inventions of pure evil and destruction, like nuclear bombs. And I’m sure they couldn’t imagine objects of wonder like skyscrapers and aeroplanes could be converted into weapons of mass destruction.

It’s not like ugly reality didn’t come crashing in on this Fair. The second World War broke out at the end of its first season. The nations of Poland and Czechoslovakia ceased to exist in the rest of the world, although their pavillions continued operation at the World’s Fair. In the midst of the global tensions, the Soviet Union withdrew its exhibition, which featured a giant statue of a working man holding aloft a red star as though he was grabbing a strap on the Lexington Avenue subway.

When the Fair reopened for its second season, the theme became “For Peace and Freedom,” and advertisements emphasized the many flags of the world flying together. That, too, was endearingly naive.

In the end, the Trylon and Perisphere also became weapons of destruction. They were torn down, and their steel frames were converted to armaments for the war effort.

Fairgoers who attended General Motors’ “Futurama” exhibit were given a button to wear that bragged: “I have seen the future.” But they hadn’t, the lucky bastards.

For more information: The Iconography of Hope: the 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair