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Dan Hennessey Has Died

I was at a Save the Plaza rally when I heard the grim news that one of my former co-workers, Dan Hennessey, had died on Sunday morning. He was hit by a car near his home in Woodside. Apparently it was all over the news. The Daily News headlined the story, “Queens Grandpa Killed by Driver Fleeing Police.”

The driver was some jerk who was pulled over by a cop for talking on his cellphone while driving his obnoxious sports car. Rather than deal with a ticket, he sped away and killed an innocent old man.

Dan was 76 years old. He wasn’t in the best health, and he had left the job last spring in order to care for his wife, who was also ill. His wife, Margaret, survived him. “He was a good husband,” she said to the News. “He was just ready to enjoy life.”

Dan worked as a banquet bartender at the Palace hotel for many years. He served the union as the Shop Chairman in the hotel, the top shop steward with significant power to negotiate with management. After he retired from the hotel, the union asked him to join the staff in a part-time capacity. He was the “Officer of the Day,” the Business Agent who stayed in the office to deal with members who walked in with grievances and no appointment.

He was a colorful character in the office, well-liked and loud (louder than Alan Amalgamated!). He could be gruff with the members, but it came from working in the industry for so many years and having no tolerance for bullshit. Those of us who were kids hired by the union from outside the rank and file were counseled to take every member’s grievances seriously and to diligently investigate every crazy claim, while Dan could be heard throughout the hallways shouting, “YOU CAN’T DO THAT, MA’AM!” I can picture him right now, yelling that on the phone, his short sleeve shirt exposing his old school anchor tattoo from his days in the Navy. No one who worked with him will ever forget him.

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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.

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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.

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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.