Speaker 1: Oh boy, podcasts, which one is this? Robert now, Sophie.
Speaker 1: Scholars have debated for years how to tell what podcast
Speaker 1: you're introducing when you're introducing your podcast. Um, and I
Speaker 1: think I hold with Robert Sapolski of Stanford University when
Speaker 1: he said it is impossible to know the name or
Speaker 1: the hour of the podcast that you host, Sophie. This
Speaker 1: is Behind the Bastards. Our guests day is the lovely
Speaker 1: Bridget Todd. Hi, Bridget, Hello, I'm so happy to be
Speaker 1: here with y'all. I'm happy to have you here. How
Speaker 1: are you doing today, Bridget? I am doing well. I
Speaker 1: am in d C, where it is hot as balls.
Speaker 1: It's like still winter here basically, so it's like sixty
Speaker 1: and rainy, which is dope. But I remember you and
Speaker 1: I met in DC when it was hot as balls.
Speaker 1: That's right, the swamp as they say, it's hot as
Speaker 1: balls in Los Angeles to it too, So yeah, it's
Speaker 1: hot as balls everywhere, but where I am. And now, Bridget,
Speaker 1: you're an East Coast girl, that's right, born in Bread
Speaker 1: Uh huh, that's now. How do you? How do you?
Speaker 1: How do you? How do you? How do you like
Speaker 1: the Big Apple? The New the New of York's. Oh
Speaker 1: I love New York. I lived there for two years. Um,
Speaker 1: I loved it. I'm I'm a I'm an East Coast girl,
Speaker 1: saffy mouth, you know, yelling in traffic, et cetera. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm walking here, that kind of stuff. Well, the most
Speaker 1: famous thing about New York culture is that scene where
Speaker 1: what's his name is that? That's not the nero, is it? Um?
Speaker 1: I want to say Dustin Hoffman. It's Dustin Hoffman from
Speaker 1: Midnight Cowboy, right, where he's like walking across the street
Speaker 1: with the other guy and like that dude nearly hits him.
Speaker 1: He's like, I'm walking here. Well, that's a famous New
Speaker 1: York moment. It's the thing everybody jokes about when they
Speaker 1: pretend to be a New Yorker, And of course it
Speaker 1: is a moment. What's what's depicted in that seen is
Speaker 1: a man having an aggressive interaction with someone in a car. Right.
Speaker 1: Because New York has famously heinous traffic problems. Um, not
Speaker 1: quite Los Angeles bad, although the parking is worse than
Speaker 1: it is in l A. Um, but pretty bad traffic.
Speaker 1: And today we're going to talk about the guy who's
Speaker 1: responsible for that, Bridget. Have you ever heard of Robert Moses?
Speaker 1: I have not. Oh Bobby Mose. Yeah, this is um.
Speaker 1: This guy is important if you're not if you've never
Speaker 1: been to New York is um. The the lingering impacts
Speaker 1: of the things that he did are like almost incomprehensibly Titanic.
Speaker 1: But he is also known as the man who built
Speaker 1: New York City. UM. Like all, a huge number of
Speaker 1: the landmarks that are most famous about that town UM
Speaker 1: were the result of this guy's direct work and spoilers.
Speaker 1: He was a gigantic racist with a weird car fetish. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I guess it wouldn't be bastards if it was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: he was a really nice guy. You like to cook
Speaker 1: like salads for people in hand them out. This is
Speaker 1: just a podcast about a guy who made salads for free, Bridget.
Speaker 1: I feel like they were all right, Bridget, we should
Speaker 1: have done uh this before we did cool people who
Speaker 1: did cool stuff with Margaret Kildrey, so you could have
Speaker 1: the proper cleans for for What's interesting is, for a
Speaker 1: long time people called this guy a cool person who
Speaker 1: had done cool stuff, and notably the folks who did
Speaker 1: were rich white people like I guess he was a
Speaker 1: cool person depending on who you ask for some perhaps
Speaker 1: he was cool in that way that like if you
Speaker 1: have a movie and you have like the bad guy,
Speaker 1: who's this like figure in government who's incredibly good at
Speaker 1: like wielding power and like carrying out like you could
Speaker 1: have made a good house of cards, Like uh, Netflix
Speaker 1: series about how good this guy was it like um running,
Speaker 1: like pulling the levers of government. Like, I guess he's
Speaker 1: cool in that regard, But he is part of the
Speaker 1: reason why we're all going to choke to death on
Speaker 1: exhaust fumes. So that part, I would say is probably bad.
Speaker 1: Bridget how do you feel about choking to death on
Speaker 1: exhaust fumes? I don't love it. I don't love it.
Speaker 1: Not not pro choking. Okay, Well, I'm gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 1: put I I keep a little keep a little tally
Speaker 1: by the desk of people who want to choke to
Speaker 1: death on exhaust fumes. So I'm gonna mark you a no.
Speaker 1: Which is the first big disagreement you and Jamie Loftus
Speaker 1: have had. Oh she's she's like, Oh, she's a huge
Speaker 1: fan of choking on exhaust huge That's why she spent
Speaker 1: so much time in Florida. Recently, the Ghost Church podcast
Speaker 1: was just to cover listen to Ghost Church now on
Speaker 1: the Heart Radio network. Okay, we should talk about Robert Moses.
Speaker 1: What's Sophie? Come on, you're gonna plug it it. Please
Speaker 1: plug the network it's on, which is ours, which is
Speaker 1: called cool Zone Media. And that doesn't sound like us, really,
Speaker 1: that doesn't sound like us. So bridget Bobby Moses. Robert
Speaker 1: Moses Arms. Rob Mose was born in New Haven, Connecticut,
Speaker 1: on December eighteen eight His father, Emmanuel was descended from
Speaker 1: Spanish Jewish immigrants, His mother, Isabella, was German Jewish, and
Speaker 1: her father, Bernard Cohen, was a wealthy New York businessman.
Speaker 1: For nine years, he and his parents lived in Connecticut,
Speaker 1: just a couple of blocks from Yale Um. And based
Speaker 1: on the fact that they lived next door to to Yale,
Speaker 1: you will not be surprised to hear they were comfortable
Speaker 1: and quite affluent, right, Like, not a lot of poor
Speaker 1: kids grow up in the shadow of Yale University. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the Yale is a dead giveaway that you've
Speaker 1: got some money. Yeah. No, it was a rough neighborhood.
Speaker 1: Skull and bones. Guys robbed us every night beat us
Speaker 1: with diplomas. Um. Yeah, so he grows up next to
Speaker 1: Yale UM and his dad the family business that his
Speaker 1: dad isn't. His dad owns a department store and is
Speaker 1: also a real estate speculator in Connecticut. UM. And he
Speaker 1: was successful enough at these endeavors that in eighteen ninety
Speaker 1: seven he sold his business, he sold his real estate holdings,
Speaker 1: and he retired. He retires like pretty, he's not a
Speaker 1: he's not a he's like kind of early middle age
Speaker 1: when he does this. Um. And the reason he retires
Speaker 1: is that his wife's father, Robert Moses, is m Grandpa
Speaker 1: Bernard had died that year and he had willed his
Speaker 1: daughter and her family his mansion in New York City.
Speaker 1: So Robert Moses, his dad retires because their grandpa died
Speaker 1: and left them a mansion. So they're like, well, we
Speaker 1: have all this cash and now we have a mansion.
Speaker 1: Why are we We don't need to really do anything else,
Speaker 1: you know. So they moved to the mansion in New
Speaker 1: York City and they've become fancy New York socialite people. Right,
Speaker 1: So pretty easy run of it, you would say at
Speaker 1: this stage. Yeah, just being given mansion's sounds sounds pretty sweet. Yes,
Speaker 1: he has the upbringing of like of a of a
Speaker 1: teenage girl and like a Hallmark Original movie. Um, where
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, we have this surprise family mansion. Now
Speaker 1: we're going to live in New York and be sudden socialites. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: that's very much his background. Yeah, it's giving like what's
Speaker 1: that Adam Sandler movie where he becomes wealthy? Um? Mr Deeds,
Speaker 1: Like a little bit of Mr. Deeds. It's a Mr. Deeds,
Speaker 1: but we all wish it was a Billy Madison. Um.
Speaker 1: So here his mom like, well, now that they're in
Speaker 1: New York, their fancy socialite people, you know, they're they're
Speaker 1: they're living it up, drinking tea with like all of
Speaker 1: their fingers extended, all that that fancy ship. His mom
Speaker 1: gets involved in what's called the settlement house movement. Now again,
Speaker 1: they are rich, but they are they are the kind
Speaker 1: of descendants of some of the first Jewish people to
Speaker 1: come to the United States and given like again because
Speaker 1: they have money, like a lot of their their ancestors
Speaker 1: are some of the first Jewish folks who immigrate out
Speaker 1: of Europe and into the Northeast. Um. Their ancestors are
Speaker 1: doing pretty well. But obviously by the eighteen nineties, most
Speaker 1: of the Jews who are coming to the United States
Speaker 1: are not people with money. Right. If you remember your
Speaker 1: history and you think about why a lot of Jewish
Speaker 1: people are fleeing to New York in the eighteen nineties,
Speaker 1: think back to our episodes on the Czars. They are
Speaker 1: having trouble, right, Um. So these are are mainly immigrants
Speaker 1: from like Eastern Europe, from Slavic countries, um. And they're
Speaker 1: seen by so the kind of established Jewish community in
Speaker 1: New York at this time is primarily German Jewish, and
Speaker 1: a lot of them are are are kind of upper class,
Speaker 1: and so they have deep sympathy for their Eastern European
Speaker 1: co religionists, but they also are kind of bigoted against them,
Speaker 1: right because number one, Slavs are are Again, this is
Speaker 1: the attitude of like rich German's kind of unkimpt and
Speaker 1: like dirty and stuff, right, Like they're poor, you know, um,
Speaker 1: And they come from this like less civilized part of
Speaker 1: Europe and the attitudes of these people and also a
Speaker 1: lot of them are dangerously socialist, right. A lot of
Speaker 1: like Jewish refugees in the eighteen nineties have left wing leanings.
Speaker 1: And again, these the established Jewish community in New York,
Speaker 1: like a lot of them have money, right, Like Robert
Speaker 1: Moses family and their mansion are not socialists, you know,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be very surprised if they were. So there's
Speaker 1: this there's this x of things and some of its
Speaker 1: self preservation, right because people like Bella Moses, who's who's
Speaker 1: Robert's mom um and other kind of wealthy um diaspora
Speaker 1: Jews in the United States both are like, well, we
Speaker 1: don't like this socialism, and we're not really fans of
Speaker 1: a lot of these people's like Slavic customs. But also, um,
Speaker 1: it's potentially dangerous if Jewish people in the United States
Speaker 1: develop a reputation for being like left wing radicals, because
Speaker 1: that ship has been very dangerous for Jewish people in Europe. Right.
Speaker 1: So there's this decision among kind of the great and
Speaker 1: good in the Jewish community that like, we need to
Speaker 1: Americanize these folks fucking asap. Right. Um. So settlement houses
Speaker 1: provide new immigrants with a place to live, um, where
Speaker 1: they can learn English and like American customs like not
Speaker 1: talking about socialists and reunionizing in your workplace, right, Um,
Speaker 1: so these settlement houses are in a lot always very
Speaker 1: positive things. These people are desperate refugees coming to the
Speaker 1: United States. They need shelter, they need food, they need
Speaker 1: job opportunities, clothing, all that kind of stuff, and the
Speaker 1: settlement houses provide that. But they're also deeply paternal a stick,
Speaker 1: as this quote from a write up by the by
Speaker 1: Virginia Commonwealth University makes clear. Quote Underneath the giving of
Speaker 1: money in time was an assumption that the givers knew
Speaker 1: what was best for the recipients. The recipients did not
Speaker 1: always appear grateful. Some have been leaders in their own
Speaker 1: Jewish communities, some were educated, some were professionals, and some
Speaker 1: have been political activists. But almost everyone had pride and
Speaker 1: could sense when they were being patronized. So you get
Speaker 1: what's kind of like, there's some yeah, this is this
Speaker 1: is what Bob Moses family is involved, and they're the
Speaker 1: ones doing the patronizing. Yeah, it's interesting that So that
Speaker 1: that bit that you just read also shout out to
Speaker 1: VC you. My parents both thought there, Um, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: interesting to me that like they knew, they know when
Speaker 1: they're being patronized. It I feel like we often pathologize
Speaker 1: people of like, oh, like they don't really know what's
Speaker 1: going on, Like you can just say whatever, But like
Speaker 1: I really like that point that like, oh, they knew
Speaker 1: what time it was, they knew, you know, what the
Speaker 1: vibe wasn't how they were being treated. Yeah, they're aware
Speaker 1: of what's going on, but it's also like, what are
Speaker 1: you gonna do turn down the free food in the
Speaker 1: place to stay? Like it's hard landing in America with
Speaker 1: nothing but the clothes on your back. You know, you
Speaker 1: need something. And so this is the community the people
Speaker 1: who are again doing the patronizing. That's where young Bob
Speaker 1: Moses grows up as this rich kid watching his mom
Speaker 1: and she's fundraising, she's setting up these facilities where like
Speaker 1: rich people plot out life paths for poor people. Um.
Speaker 1: And he and his brother Paul attend several fancy private
Speaker 1: schools in a military school. You know, they have kind
Speaker 1: of the most privileged upbringing you can within this community. Uh.
Speaker 1: And in nineteen o five, at age seventeen, Robert Moses
Speaker 1: starts classes at Yale. So again doing great. Um, how
Speaker 1: do you think he got in? You think he no? No,
Speaker 1: he's His test scores were just like good as hell. No, no,
Speaker 1: I think it was Aunt Becky from Full House. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean no, these people. I think these guys have
Speaker 1: the money that you don't need to Aunt Becky. It right,
Speaker 1: like you've got the family. Now that said, we are
Speaker 1: going to talk about it. It's actually not there's a
Speaker 1: little bit because again he is Jewish, right, which is
Speaker 1: a a you are not really white as a Jewish
Speaker 1: person in in fucking nineteen oh five, you know, like
Speaker 1: that has not come around yet. So he he's moderately athletic. Uh,
Speaker 1: he's he's a good competitor. He's he's a runner, he's
Speaker 1: a swimmer. Um. And he also from an early age
Speaker 1: takes on his mom's activism bent but of course since
Speaker 1: he's a Yale kid, his activism is like rich kid activism.
Speaker 1: So like the first thing he organizes is a fight
Speaker 1: to take some of the money budgeted for the school's
Speaker 1: football program and diverted to what we're called minor sports,
Speaker 1: which in the US was everything but football. Um, so
Speaker 1: that's like his first piece of like community organizing. But
Speaker 1: I like, I know, I feel like I know so
Speaker 1: much about him just having having that information that that
Speaker 1: was his forming into organizing of like, we need to
Speaker 1: be funding lacrosse and squash and other sports too. He's
Speaker 1: the kind of guy where if you'd like met him
Speaker 1: a couple of decades later at a party and been like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've been organizing a food bank, he'd be like, yes,
Speaker 1: I have community organizing experience too. Let me tell you
Speaker 1: about the squash team we funded. You did not have
Speaker 1: a British accent, but I can't, like, if you're doing posh,
Speaker 1: you just have to go English. So yeah, he's a
Speaker 1: He's a good student. He wins awards for his performance
Speaker 1: in Latin mathematics, public speaking. He writes for The Current,
Speaker 1: which is their newspaper. He edits a volume of poetry. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: obviously he's doing just fine. Right, This is not a
Speaker 1: kid who is struggling tremendously in his early life. Um.
Speaker 1: But again he's he is Jewish in this period, which
Speaker 1: means he's not insulated entirely from how fucking racist upper
Speaker 1: class society is. One of my sources for his early
Speaker 1: life is an article in the Atlantic from nineteen thirty nine. Uh.
Speaker 1: It extremely tactfully notes, because it's not it's ninety nine,
Speaker 1: the Atlantic doesn't view racism as bad. Um it notes
Speaker 1: quote a non fraternity man could hardly get further at Yale.
Speaker 1: So it's basically saying like he did as good as
Speaker 1: a man with not in a fraternity could do in Yale.
Speaker 1: And you may be wondering, I wasn't he a fraternity
Speaker 1: man because he's again very wealthy, well, because he's Jewish,
Speaker 1: and jewishman in nineteen oh five were not allowed to
Speaker 1: be in fraternities at Yale. Right, you could attend, but
Speaker 1: you could not. It's it's the same way that like,
Speaker 1: up until pretty recently, there were quite a few there's
Speaker 1: probably still are, like country clubs and golf courses that
Speaker 1: like wouldn't let Jewish people in, you know. Um, So
Speaker 1: while there had been Jewish people at Yale um since
Speaker 1: the seventeen hundreds, they kept an official cap on Jewish
Speaker 1: admission to the school, like they had a maximum number
Speaker 1: of Jewish people who are allowed to attend. And I
Speaker 1: want to quote now from a New York Times article
Speaker 1: written in nineteen eight six. Not until the early nineteen
Speaker 1: sixties did Yale at University in an informal admissions policy
Speaker 1: that restricted Jewish enrollment to about ten percent. I did
Speaker 1: not know that sixties. I mean, and obviously there's their
Speaker 1: racist In other ways, Jewish people are not the most
Speaker 1: discriminated group of folks at Yale. But like they kept
Speaker 1: that ship going until the sixty as much later than
Speaker 1: I would have assumed officially on the books, right, Like
Speaker 1: it's an in for like they don't have a law
Speaker 1: by law, But there was a book published by the
Speaker 1: Yale University players being like, yeah, we found based on
Speaker 1: like letters between people running the school that like, yeah,
Speaker 1: they didn't allow more than ten percent of the classes
Speaker 1: to be Jewish for up until the sixties. Um, it's
Speaker 1: pretty pretty cool. Um. I found a book Joining the Club,
Speaker 1: which began as a sophomore term paper by guy named
Speaker 1: Dan A. Oran who's the nineteen seventy nine Yale grad um,
Speaker 1: that documents anti semitism reaching from fraternity brothers to board
Speaker 1: trustees at Yale. A lot of the unit of the
Speaker 1: research is based on university documents. Um. And uh quote
Speaker 1: here from again from that right up uh in um
Speaker 1: the New York Times. One document, a folder now in
Speaker 1: the university archives labeled Jewish Problems, contains a memo from
Speaker 1: the admissions chairman of NINETO urging limits on the alien
Speaker 1: and unwashed element. The next year, the Admissions Commission acted
Speaker 1: the Limitation of Numbers policy, and informal quota Jewish enrollment
Speaker 1: was held to about ten for four decades. So part
Speaker 1: of what's happening here, he's allowed in again because he
Speaker 1: is not seen as he's not seen as like a
Speaker 1: fully a white person, but he's not seen as because
Speaker 1: he's rich fully Jewish. Right. The thing they're trying to
Speaker 1: keep out is Jewish people from Eastern Europe is like slabs, right, um.
Speaker 1: And that's that's like the the alien and unwashed element
Speaker 1: again ninety two. That's how Yale is describing these kits. Altho.
Speaker 1: I love that the text is called Jewish Problems. Oh yes,
Speaker 1: like just to be real explicit, real clear. At least
Speaker 1: they didn't call it the Jewish Question, right, um, but
Speaker 1: not that far off right. So that's that's the world.
Speaker 1: Our boy Robbie comes up and he's simultaneously on the
Speaker 1: very top of the social hierarchy in New York City. Right,
Speaker 1: you don't get a lot more privileged than he is, um,
Speaker 1: And he and his family you could almost look at
Speaker 1: them as kind of like feudal lords in respect to
Speaker 1: a lot of poor immigrant Jews, right, who are kind
Speaker 1: of dependent on their large s um. And so he's
Speaker 1: able to exist in the rarefied levels of white Christian society.
Speaker 1: But he's also permanently uthered from it, right, He's not
Speaker 1: fully accepted in it either. This is an interesting like
Speaker 1: way to grow up. And you might think, because he
Speaker 1: couldn't not be aware of the injustices of the era,
Speaker 1: that he would be extra sympathetic to other people struggling
Speaker 1: against bigotry. That you might think that that's not how
Speaker 1: it goes down um, But we're building to that. So
Speaker 1: after Yale Um, he goes to Oxford Um, where The
Speaker 1: Atlantic recalls this occurrence in his early background. A terrific
Speaker 1: outspokenness which never counts the odds against him, appeared in
Speaker 1: one Oxford experience when he was selected to represent his
Speaker 1: college at a World Congress on racial problems. His frankness
Speaker 1: so infuriated some of the intense nationalist groups that once
Speaker 1: he had to free from the platform and escape through
Speaker 1: a rear exit. One of the delegates and an assistant
Speaker 1: to the Cadive of Egypt, was so impressed that he
Speaker 1: offered Moses a position as secretary to the cadive. Moses declined,
Speaker 1: but later he had a classmate visited Egypt to study
Speaker 1: what was being done under Kitchener and developed a profound
Speaker 1: admiration for British colonial administration. So that carries a shiploaded ground. Right,
Speaker 1: He's going to this like congress thing at Oxford and
Speaker 1: talking about racism probably you have to assume racism against
Speaker 1: like Jewish people, because it's the period of time that
Speaker 1: it is um And he gets chased away by by fascists, right,
Speaker 1: he gets chased off states by fascists for talking about
Speaker 1: how racism is bad. And then he impresses the government
Speaker 1: of Egypt, which at this point is like the British Empire,
Speaker 1: and he goes and he's like, boy, these British sure
Speaker 1: know how to govern a multiracial society fairly, Like that's
Speaker 1: an incredible degree of like ship to cover, right, Wow,
Speaker 1: I mean it really is interesting. How like if I
Speaker 1: didn't know where this was going, I would think, like,
Speaker 1: this is gonna turn out to be somebody who like,
Speaker 1: is this like great leftist person who you know understands
Speaker 1: why being you know, actively anti racist is a good thing.
Speaker 1: And it's so interesting how it's like no part pivot.
Speaker 1: Actually it is a hard and it's interesting because he
Speaker 1: clearly sees the problems of nationalism and racism. But also
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about this more in a second.
Speaker 1: He he looks at the government of Egypt under the
Speaker 1: British and he's like, this is how you run a
Speaker 1: multiracial society. So he's he's he's only looking at it.
Speaker 1: He's looking at the problems of race and is able
Speaker 1: to see them as far as they affect people like him,
Speaker 1: who are like upper class but kept out of the
Speaker 1: highest level of the upper class because of an accident
Speaker 1: of birth. But he's not able to see it anywhere
Speaker 1: below that level. Right, that's going to be the guy
Speaker 1: Bobby Moses grows up into. But first, bridget you know
Speaker 1: who does see the problems of racism? Who the products
Speaker 1: and services that support this podcast. That's why on violand
Speaker 1: where you can hunt children, they don't see race. They
Speaker 1: don't see race at all. They kidnapped kids from every continent, um,
Speaker 1: from every from every financial group. You know, if if
Speaker 1: you're a child, you might wind up child hunting island,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't matter what your background is. You know,
Speaker 1: that's the beauty of Bridget. This is a master This
Speaker 1: was a masterful Thank you, thank you. Sophie says that
Speaker 1: all the time, but I appreciate the additional support. She
Speaker 1: loves it. It's your favorite bit. She's so because you
Speaker 1: have then you love it. It's because I have to
Speaker 1: make edit notes for editor to bleep the name. It's
Speaker 1: very funny, and people people keep being like, people think
Speaker 1: he's being real. They should do It's so funny. I'm
Speaker 1: never gonna stop anyway, here's oh we're back now, Bridget.
Speaker 1: If you were going to eat a kid, right, oh
Speaker 1: my god, what do you the ribs right, like that's
Speaker 1: where the softest meat is going to be, I would say,
Speaker 1: so this just I just finished watching that show on
Speaker 1: Netflix alone and it turned into a conversation. If I
Speaker 1: had to eat somebody, how would I go about it?
Speaker 1: I think ribs, I think some some some kind of
Speaker 1: like fatty cut of meat, so like thighs, butt area,
Speaker 1: because you're gonna want to have a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of fattiness. Anya, you'd want to slow cook it. Um.
Speaker 1: I ate I kind of ate people. Once. I ate
Speaker 1: a fish that had just been eating human corpses, and
Speaker 1: it was pretty good. But that's as close as I've gotten.
Speaker 1: I haven't just like having straight what Sophie, how are
Speaker 1: we doing? I don't know. How are you doing, Buddy?
Speaker 1: I'm kind of today I'm feeling fine. I'm feeling fine.
Speaker 1: So you've said some wild ship today everyone's having a
Speaker 1: good time on the old internet dot com. So we're
Speaker 1: at an interesting point in Bob Moses's background here, Robbie Moses,
Speaker 1: because um, we've seen him both like get chased off
Speaker 1: the stage by fascists for their bigotry and also he
Speaker 1: goes to Egypt and he develops this deep appreciation for
Speaker 1: what is an extremely racist cast system imposed by the
Speaker 1: British and their colonial project in North Africa. Now we
Speaker 1: should talk a little bit about what's going on here,
Speaker 1: because so what you kind of so the Ottoman Empire
Speaker 1: still exists, right, this is prior to World War One,
Speaker 1: you know, and if you're not aware, the Ottoman Empire
Speaker 1: they're the ones who kind of end the Eastern Roman Empire,
Speaker 1: very powerful for a few hundred years and then like
Speaker 1: the sick Man of Europe is the term used for them,
Speaker 1: for like five years, right, because they're just kind of
Speaker 1: like this failing empire, but they govern basically the whole
Speaker 1: modern Middle East, right um. And they technically are in
Speaker 1: charge in North Africa, but they're bad at projecting power,
Speaker 1: and so the British kind of come in and are
Speaker 1: running Egypt and a chunk of it that this is
Speaker 1: the whole history here is more complicated. But technically this
Speaker 1: area is under the government of the Ottoman Empire, but
Speaker 1: the British are like helping them maintain control through force
Speaker 1: of arms. Um. And it's it's effectively a British colonial project,
Speaker 1: right um. And the the guy who was responsible in
Speaker 1: this period for imposing colonial rule by the British on
Speaker 1: North Africa is a dude named Lord Kitchener. Um. The
Speaker 1: reason Kitcheners in charges he had there had been this um.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about this one day. It's a fascinating piece
Speaker 1: of history. So there's this guy um in the lady
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds who early nineteen hundreds, who calls himself the Mahdi, right,
Speaker 1: And Mahdi is an Islamic term. It means um uh
Speaker 1: Messianic messiah basically, right, So like the Mahdi is like
Speaker 1: supposed to be the Islamic Messiah and there's this dude
Speaker 1: who claims to be the Mahdi and he creates it's
Speaker 1: kind of like the Islamic state, right, an early version
Speaker 1: of it. He creates like this, We're going to finally
Speaker 1: go back to true Islam. Um. And he wins a
Speaker 1: bunch of battles against the colonial forces. He massacre several
Speaker 1: British armies. It's a really fascinating piece of history. We've
Speaker 1: talked about this a bit when we talk about um
Speaker 1: the Maxim gun and some other stuff. But so he
Speaker 1: this Mahdi has this big uprising in Sudan, um and
Speaker 1: there's this this vicious war and Kishener Kitchener crushes the
Speaker 1: war or brutally in this battle called omdurman Um with
Speaker 1: where Winston Churchill shows up and shoots a bunch of
Speaker 1: people too. So this is like an important piece of
Speaker 1: like colonial history. Um. Kitchener is also the guy who
Speaker 1: by this point had orchestrated the war against the Boers
Speaker 1: in Africa, where he had pioneered the military use of
Speaker 1: concentration camps. He was really the first guy, since like
Speaker 1: the Spanish too, to use them in a really modern way. UM.
Speaker 1: So that's who Kitchener is right. He's this guy who
Speaker 1: crushes the modest uprising. He's this guy who puts concentration
Speaker 1: camps in South Africa. Um, he's a he's a pretty
Speaker 1: fucked up dude. We'll talk about him more at some
Speaker 1: point in the future. What's relevant now is that after
Speaker 1: he takes over, after like he crushes the Modests, he's
Speaker 1: in charge in North Africa for a while, he's like
Speaker 1: running things for the Brits and he helps them establish
Speaker 1: a framework for governing Egypt. That because again, they don't
Speaker 1: on paper control Egypt the way they do India right,
Speaker 1: Like India is like a possession of the crown, right,
Speaker 1: that's not entirely what's going on. So they have to
Speaker 1: have this illusion of na of rule um. But they
Speaker 1: don't want like obviously they're not gonna let Egyptians run
Speaker 1: Egypt like that's the kind of thing. Of course, not
Speaker 1: Africans in charge in Africa. It is the early nineteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: That ship is not happening. Yeah, no, no, no, So
Speaker 1: Kitchener creates something called the condominium um and under this
Speaker 1: he basically carves out an Arabic empire run by the
Speaker 1: British from the hind quarters of the dying Ottoman Empire.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna I'm gonna read a quote from the
Speaker 1: book A Piece to End All Peace that describes how
Speaker 1: this functioned in practice. The cabinet, which is like the
Speaker 1: governing agency of the condominium, in this instance, allowed Kitchener's
Speaker 1: agency to establish the prototype of the form of rule
Speaker 1: that the Field Marshal and his staff eventually wanted Britain
Speaker 1: to exercise throughout the Arabic speaking world. It was not
Speaker 1: to be direct rules, such as was practiced in parts
Speaker 1: of India and Kitcheners Egypt, hereditary prince and native cabinet
Speaker 1: members and governors went through the motions of governing. They
Speaker 1: promuligated under their own name decisions recommended to them by
Speaker 1: the British advisors at hatched to their respective offices. That
Speaker 1: was the form of protectorate government favored by the Kitchener group.
Speaker 1: So they build like a fake shadow government that is
Speaker 1: supposed to on paper exercise all the power, but then
Speaker 1: kind of extra legally it's it's white people pulling all
Speaker 1: the strings and actually running everything. You know. Um, So
Speaker 1: this is what Bob Moses looks at as a as
Speaker 1: a young man, he goes to Egypt, he sees the
Speaker 1: way this is a setup, and he's like, this is
Speaker 1: the ideal way to run a multiracial society. This is
Speaker 1: how you do it right, Like, this is a good call.
Speaker 1: You know, they've built the British have built a perfect
Speaker 1: uh society free of racial conflict in Northern Africa. It's
Speaker 1: so stunning, how I think it's exactly what you said.
Speaker 1: We're like the ability to sort of like understand and
Speaker 1: contend with racism really does stop insofar as it like
Speaker 1: no longer directly centers him in this situation. He's just like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is great, Like we need to we need to
Speaker 1: like build on this model. What a great system. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it's obvious sleep the tour as this like upper
Speaker 1: class kid who gets like recognized by the cadive for
Speaker 1: his courage at the speaking engagement. The tour he's getting
Speaker 1: of Egypt. He's not like backpacking around and talking to
Speaker 1: the common people. He's visiting like the folks who are running.
Speaker 1: He's visiting like the Arabs who are working with the
Speaker 1: British Empire and and living very well as a result.
Speaker 1: And they're telling him like, oh, no, are people like
Speaker 1: people love living this way like this whole everyone's very happy,
Speaker 1: like you have this perfect division and nobody wants anything
Speaker 1: to change. This is an idea. It's that kind of
Speaker 1: vision of the Middle East. This is that that period
Speaker 1: like when you watch ship like um um uh, the
Speaker 1: like a lot of the media that comes out pre
Speaker 1: World War One or kind of into World War one
Speaker 1: and World War two where it's like white people vacationing
Speaker 1: or traveling around like the Middle East to Northern Africa,
Speaker 1: and it's this very like uh, this like colonial kind
Speaker 1: of porn basically totally um. You get bits of that
Speaker 1: in the Kenneth Branda poiro series, although I do think
Speaker 1: he I mean, it's not primarily focused on that, but
Speaker 1: like there's pieces of that in it, Like it's this
Speaker 1: is this is forever the period that like a certain
Speaker 1: kind of white person will look back on and be like, oh,
Speaker 1: it was so much nicer back then. Oh yeah, that's
Speaker 1: even today. People still romanticize that ship and like, like
Speaker 1: I've seen some pretty atrocious, you know, rightly panned sex
Speaker 1: theme weddings were like, oh the theme is essentially colonialism. Uh,
Speaker 1: pretty corross thing to romanticize. Yeah. Um and and Bobby
Speaker 1: Moses is like romanticizing it while it's happening. So he
Speaker 1: he comes back from Egypt. Um. You know, he's he's
Speaker 1: studied law at Yale and Oxford. He does a post
Speaker 1: graduate course on political science at Columbia when he gets back, UM,
Speaker 1: and he gets his first job in government in nineteen thirteen.
Speaker 1: He's twenty five years old. Um. He'll receive his doctorate
Speaker 1: in political science a year later. And this initial gig
Speaker 1: is with the New York City Municipal Research Bureau UM,
Speaker 1: which at the time is focused on reforming the city's
Speaker 1: civil service. Now, if you remember your American history, right,
Speaker 1: Tammany Hall and Ship is big. In this period, New
Speaker 1: York is like one big cesspit of graft and corruption.
Speaker 1: You know, everybody is bribing everybody. The police are just
Speaker 1: like hired goons for different like elected leaders who are
Speaker 1: basically gangsters. So it's it's the same as it is today,
Speaker 1: but we use different terms to describe it. Um. I mean,
Speaker 1: you're not wrong, you're joking, You're not I'm not really joking.
Speaker 1: It's I'll say it's probably in terms of the actual
Speaker 1: political corruption, it's broadly speaking, worse than it is now.
Speaker 1: Although it is different, Like I guess at this point,
Speaker 1: one of the big differences is the police are literally
Speaker 1: just hired goons as opposed to now the police are
Speaker 1: a power block in their own right that controls the
Speaker 1: city with like an iron grip. That is different right
Speaker 1: at this period of time, that does not has not
Speaker 1: like the NYPD is not like a massive power in
Speaker 1: its own right. You know. So in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: it kind of sounds like it's worse. It might be
Speaker 1: like that's really going to be a matter of opinion. Um.
Speaker 1: But elections and stuff like it's all basically decided by
Speaker 1: you know, you have these bosses who like wrangle votes
Speaker 1: together based on like the different things that they're able
Speaker 1: to hand out, and like that's what determines who gets
Speaker 1: elected on the local level. And it's there. It's not
Speaker 1: really democratic in any meaningful way. Um. And this has
Speaker 1: started to change in the early nineteen hundreds. American cities
Speaker 1: are kind of starting to embrace the idea that local
Speaker 1: government should be slightly different from the mafia. Um And
Speaker 1: and Robert Moses is kind of one of these big
Speaker 1: reformers in terms of the way the civil service works
Speaker 1: and the specific thing he pushes is a massive reform
Speaker 1: of the hiring system. Um. He thinks that people should
Speaker 1: be picked for jobs in civil service because of personal
Speaker 1: merit and their qualifications, not because their uncle runs a
Speaker 1: numbers racket and owns a bunch of police officers. Right.
Speaker 1: That's his attitude, which is like fine. Um. So he
Speaker 1: pushes this, like, let's hire people who know how to
Speaker 1: do the jobs we want them to do thing um.
Speaker 1: And this doesn't go well because Tammany Hall is still
Speaker 1: quite powerful in this period, and the people who don't
Speaker 1: want this patronage system to change and want to keep
Speaker 1: handing out jobs like candy. Um. They fight back and
Speaker 1: they win, and Moses quits his his first gig in government.
Speaker 1: But the fact that he'd suggested such a bold reimagining
Speaker 1: of civil service earns him attention from Bell, Moscow Witz Um.
Speaker 1: And Bell is a reform advocate who advised a politician
Speaker 1: named Alfred Smith. Now in nineteen eighteen, four years into
Speaker 1: Robert's government career, Smith is elected governor of New York State.
Speaker 1: So Bob starts like advising him and whatnot on reform,
Speaker 1: and Smith campaigns and becomes governor of the entire state.
Speaker 1: Uh miss Moscow Wits who had gotten him the job,
Speaker 1: like basically helps bring him further and further into the
Speaker 1: halls of democratic party power, as like uh Alfred Smith
Speaker 1: starts his career actually running the state UM and Robert Moses,
Speaker 1: he kind of gravitates towards the park system. So he's
Speaker 1: he again, this is all very much how rich people
Speaker 1: take and and you could a also not democratic because
Speaker 1: nobody of her lex Bob Moses, like some rich lady
Speaker 1: who's advising the guy who becomes governor likes him, brings
Speaker 1: him in. He starts going to parties with these people
Speaker 1: and talking to him about his ideas on government, and
Speaker 1: they start giving him jobs, right, and because he's really interested,
Speaker 1: he's fascinated by the park system, which at that point
Speaker 1: New York doesn't have a park system. There's like this
Speaker 1: chaotic mess of wildlife preservation areas and like parks that
Speaker 1: rich people had donated and local projects that like a
Speaker 1: neighborhood put together, but there's no park system, right and
Speaker 1: like in broad for the state or for the City
Speaker 1: of New York. UM and he feels like that should
Speaker 1: be changed, right, we need like to centralize it, we
Speaker 1: need to have like a more efficient way of managing
Speaker 1: and taking care of our parks um. And he he
Speaker 1: talks the Governor Smith into doing this, right he and
Speaker 1: again none of the systemic and nobody elects this. They
Speaker 1: don't like go for a plebiscite. He's just like, hey,
Speaker 1: I think this is a good idea. And Smith is like,
Speaker 1: you're right, that is a good idea. And he creates
Speaker 1: the Long Island Commission on Parks and the State count
Speaker 1: solon Parks um. And these positions are invented by Bob
Speaker 1: Moses with Smith's Smith's backing, and he's just put in
Speaker 1: charge of them um. So he doesn't necessarily have any
Speaker 1: background in this, just a just an interest. No he
Speaker 1: has he has he has like his PhD and stuff
Speaker 1: like he's like interested in public service. But he's not.
Speaker 1: He has no like parks. Now that to be fair,
Speaker 1: nobody really do because there's not like a parks department
Speaker 1: that like this is like the era in which we
Speaker 1: start to have an idea that there should be a
Speaker 1: park system like nationally, there's not like this is all
Speaker 1: coming together in the early nineteen hundreds, you know, Teddy
Speaker 1: Roosevelt's hiking with John Muir and the Weston Ship. Um So,
Speaker 1: this is all pretty new. So to be fair to him,
Speaker 1: there's not really like no one has much experience. But
Speaker 1: he is like as this guy fighting against um corruption
Speaker 1: and like patronage and people just like getting handed jobs.
Speaker 1: He's just handed this job because he's like friends with
Speaker 1: the governor, you know, like that's why he and he's
Speaker 1: he's going to be the he's going to be the
Speaker 1: chairman of the Long Island Commissi on Parks in the
Speaker 1: State Council on Parks in New York State for forty years. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: for forty years. He will be in charge of both
Speaker 1: of these things. Um And this is like, you know,
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties when he gets these positions, the early twenties,
Speaker 1: so up until through the sixties, he's going to be
Speaker 1: running the whole state park system. He never gets elected.
Speaker 1: Um So, Smith, who's again the governor, comes to know
Speaker 1: Robert Moses as the absolute best bill drafter in politics.
Speaker 1: That's the thing that like really gets him popular among
Speaker 1: other people in power is that he's able to like
Speaker 1: write these bills for things that should be to basically
Speaker 1: basically to craft what's going to be the administrative state
Speaker 1: of of the of the State of New York up
Speaker 1: until the present day. Like he is the one building
Speaker 1: the legal basis of everything that exists in New York today.
Speaker 1: Really um by putting out these bills saying, hey, we
Speaker 1: should be in charge of this. Hey, the government should
Speaker 1: be regulating this. Hey, we should be building this kind
Speaker 1: of thing. Hey, we should be in like over time
Speaker 1: building again, what is New York's proba? Probably like one
Speaker 1: of the most centralized state governments in the United States
Speaker 1: right now. Bob Moses builds it with Albert Smith and
Speaker 1: and together they create what is certainly at the time
Speaker 1: the most centralized government in the United States. In nineteen seven,
Speaker 1: Smith makes Moses the Secretary of State for New York. UM. Now,
Speaker 1: this doesn't last for long. Franklin Roosevelt gets elected governor
Speaker 1: the next year to meet, defeating Smith UM. And as
Speaker 1: he leaves, Smith makes one request of FDR, which is
Speaker 1: keep Bob Moses as Secretary of State UM and Roosevelt
Speaker 1: actually declines. UM. And this is due to the fact
Speaker 1: that this is not due to any good reason on
Speaker 1: Roosevelt's part. Bob Moses had refused to hire Roosevelt Secretary
Speaker 1: Lois howe to a position in the Council of Parks.
Speaker 1: So FDRs like funk that guy. Um, So he loses
Speaker 1: his he's not Secretary of State for very long, but
Speaker 1: Moses continues to be the chairman of basically the whole
Speaker 1: Parks Department. UM. And FDR when he comes in, sees
Speaker 1: how effective and powerful this this centralized cittical machine that
Speaker 1: Bob Moses and Smith have created is and he kind
Speaker 1: of he falls in love with it, and the government
Speaker 1: of the State of New York becomes the model of
Speaker 1: the new deal government that that FDR is going to
Speaker 1: build when he becomes president. Right, he's very consciously using
Speaker 1: the state government of New York that Moses and Smith
Speaker 1: build as like this, this is how to centralize an
Speaker 1: exercise power as an executive because it it works really well,
Speaker 1: um for that kind of thing. Right, there's as we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about a lot of criticisms from it,
Speaker 1: but it's very easy for an executive to exercise power.
Speaker 1: And the government that Moses and Smith build And that's
Speaker 1: what I mean, you know, FDR, right, Like that's what
Speaker 1: he does, you know, yeah, it is. It is fascinating
Speaker 1: to me that this guy could sort of just luck
Speaker 1: his way into these positions by being wealthy and well
Speaker 1: connected and then have these this decades long impact on
Speaker 1: the on a city like New York. Like it's just
Speaker 1: that is so that is so fascinating to me that
Speaker 1: like that's how power is is amassed and the influence
Speaker 1: that it has. I mean, that's still to a significant extent,
Speaker 1: how it's amassed. Right, Um, at the highest levels. You know,
Speaker 1: it is about like who you know and who your
Speaker 1: friends are. It's why you get these It's when you
Speaker 1: get Joe Biden saying that, like, Hey, you know what,
Speaker 1: I I've talked a lot. I've known Mitch McConnell for years.
Speaker 1: He's an honest man, Like, Right, it's because they're like
Speaker 1: they're friendly, you know, even though I mean I don't
Speaker 1: know that Mitch McConnell is capable of friendship. Um, but
Speaker 1: that's like how everything works. And Moses is the thing
Speaker 1: that he's good at. We're gonna talk about his many
Speaker 1: shortcomings in a bit. He's really good at centralizing power
Speaker 1: and building an apparatus through which the state connectxercise power
Speaker 1: over geography. Right, He's very good at that. Like, this
Speaker 1: is not a thing where he's like incompetent. He knows
Speaker 1: what that's why FDR is like we should, we should
Speaker 1: take this model and expand it across the country. Um
Speaker 1: and Moses again, he gets kind of pushed out of
Speaker 1: potentially what might have been more of a political career,
Speaker 1: But nobody ever stops him from being Chairman of the
Speaker 1: part Commission, and he grows more and more comfortable over
Speaker 1: time exercise power in this unelected position. He realizes early
Speaker 1: on that people like him right because he's building parks,
Speaker 1: you know, um and being seen as the champion of
Speaker 1: people who like parks, who want green spaces, who want
Speaker 1: like nice areas where they can go like walk around
Speaker 1: and like sit and stuff. He realizes that like being
Speaker 1: the guy who's building that gives him this tremendous amount
Speaker 1: of soft power that can allow him to to exercise
Speaker 1: actually a lot of control over New York even though
Speaker 1: he's unelected. And I'm gonna quote now from Robert Carrow's
Speaker 1: The Power Broker, which is a book about Bob Moses.
Speaker 1: Quote this lesson Moses would often recite to associates. He
Speaker 1: would put it this way, as long as you're fighting
Speaker 1: for parks, you can be sure of having public opinion
Speaker 1: on your side, and as long as you have public
Speaker 1: opinion on your side, you're safe. As long as you're
Speaker 1: on the side of parks, he would say, you're on
Speaker 1: the side of the angels. You can't lose. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: That is also so interesting because I think it's still
Speaker 1: true today that you know, there are some there are
Speaker 1: some things that do give you this element of soft
Speaker 1: power where people are always going this would be on
Speaker 1: your side. And I think it's interesting that like we
Speaker 1: as we know that, like you know, green spaces and conservation,
Speaker 1: like all of all those things are great, but they
Speaker 1: can also historically have been used to sort of usher
Speaker 1: in like a little bit of racism or like a
Speaker 1: little bit of you know, they're used to wall people off,
Speaker 1: as we're gonna talk about, and they're used to There
Speaker 1: was just an article that like people. I think it
Speaker 1: might have been I don't think it was The Times,
Speaker 1: but it was It was about in in here in California,
Speaker 1: or not here in California, but down in California and
Speaker 1: the Bay Area. This woman who like described yourself as
Speaker 1: a nimby and who'd been a community activist for forty
Speaker 1: years to like stop new housing from being built, and
Speaker 1: she's like, look, I just think people need to think
Speaker 1: before they build new housing. You know, ecology is important.
Speaker 1: We have to care about the environment. I don't want
Speaker 1: this hill near my house to like be covered in
Speaker 1: like developments because that And it's like, yeah, nobody wants
Speaker 1: green spaces to be replaced with like condos. But also
Speaker 1: because of the way you have fought this and weaponized
Speaker 1: the value of green spaces, Um, you've actually like done
Speaker 1: tremendous harm to the state and made it impossible for
Speaker 1: people to afford living there and like ratchet it up
Speaker 1: the and like forced people out. And actually, if you
Speaker 1: just built bigger, denser urban areas with more housing, less
Speaker 1: in total of the state maybe would be being used
Speaker 1: and you you would have a much more efficient use
Speaker 1: of the land that exists, and overall it could even
Speaker 1: be significantly friendlier on the environment. But because you fought
Speaker 1: to keep to keep like these sprawling suburban developments, um
Speaker 1: be the only way people can live, nobody can afford
Speaker 1: to live there. And these sprawling suburban developments keep pushing
Speaker 1: further and further and further out every year. Anyway, Um,
Speaker 1: so yeah, it's it's that like, that's that's how that's
Speaker 1: Bob Moses is like the start of that. He's the
Speaker 1: first guy who's going to figure this out. And yeah
Speaker 1: he's going to use it for racism. Um. So one
Speaker 1: of his tactics in order to like again, this is
Speaker 1: part of how he exercises power. He can't he can't
Speaker 1: like force people to fund him, but he can ask
Speaker 1: for funding for a public works project like a park.
Speaker 1: He can ask for much less money than he actually
Speaker 1: needs to be old it right. That's one of the
Speaker 1: things he always does because it's easy to get people
Speaker 1: to agree to pay to something for like a park
Speaker 1: or something for barely any money. And once the government
Speaker 1: has agreed to start funding the construction of this park,
Speaker 1: this playground, the swimming pool, they kind of have to
Speaker 1: continue funding it even if it turns out he's like, oh,
Speaker 1: bi always going to cost three times as much, Like
Speaker 1: I need a lot more money now, but we've already started.
Speaker 1: What do you not want us to finish this thing? Well,
Speaker 1: that's a good talk. I'm gonna quote again from Karo's
Speaker 1: the power Broker. Once they had authorized that small initial
Speaker 1: expenditure and you would spend it, they would not be
Speaker 1: able to avoid giving you the rest when you asked
Speaker 1: for it. How could they If they refused to give
Speaker 1: you the rest of the money, what they had given
Speaker 1: you would be wasted, and that would make them look
Speaker 1: bad in the eyes of the public. And if they
Speaker 1: said you had misled them, well, they were not supposed
Speaker 1: to be misled. If they had been mismiled, that would
Speaker 1: mean they hadn't investigated the projects thoroughly and had therefore
Speaker 1: been derelict in their own duty. The possibilities for a
Speaker 1: polite but effective form of political blackmail were endless. Once
Speaker 1: the legislature gave you money to start a project, it
Speaker 1: would be virtually forced to give you the money to
Speaker 1: finish it. The stakes you drove should be thin pointed,
Speaker 1: wed shaped, in fact, on the end. Once you got
Speaker 1: to the end of the wedge for a project into
Speaker 1: the public treasury, it would be easy to hammer. In
Speaker 1: the West, it's like a polite shakedown. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's this is like this is like an upper class
Speaker 1: white people shakedown, right, Like, okay, so you like this,
Speaker 1: you like this little park we belt, Well, unfortunately, it's
Speaker 1: going to take another like six million dollars to finish it.
Speaker 1: Um but you're good for that, right, Like you don't
Speaker 1: want to just leave this unfinished, right, that's kind of
Speaker 1: an isore in the middle of this neighborhood, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: that's how he's able to like again, he's able to
Speaker 1: exercise power over state spending as an unelected leader by
Speaker 1: doing ship like this. Right, even though he doesn't actually
Speaker 1: have the power to like, you know, commission taxes or
Speaker 1: take money out of like the government treasury, he's able
Speaker 1: to make the situation why or by the people who
Speaker 1: are elected will look bad and maybe not get re
Speaker 1: elected if they don't agree with him, because he's smart. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is more or less the way that Robert was.
Speaker 1: This unelected chairman of a park's board is able to
Speaker 1: exercise power over generations of elected leaders. Now, before we
Speaker 1: discuss what he did with that power, we should probably
Speaker 1: talk about the New York subway system in this period.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna quote from a write up and curbed
Speaker 1: On March, York Mayor Robert A. Van Wykee broke ground
Speaker 1: on the city's first subway line, which today corresponds to
Speaker 1: the four, five, and six lines. It traveled from City
Speaker 1: Hall in Lower Manhattan to West in Harlem, and construction
Speaker 1: took four years, six months, and twenty three days, a
Speaker 1: timeline that is inconceivable today. The newest subway extension, the
Speaker 1: Second Avenue line, opened nearly a decade after its most
Speaker 1: recent official groundbreaking, though construction on subsequent rail lines would
Speaker 1: rarely move that quickly. The city had a very specific
Speaker 1: attitude towards rail development and the four decades following that
Speaker 1: groundbreaking to never stop building. As Joe Raskin, author of
Speaker 1: The Routes Not Taken, puts it, the idea was to
Speaker 1: allow the subway system to expand and let the city
Speaker 1: go around it, he says, and so subway lines stretched
Speaker 1: quickly by today's standards anyway, and to un developed areas
Speaker 1: of Manhattan and the outer boroughs, with the assumption that
Speaker 1: housing and commercial development would follow. Despite setbacks, financial shortfalls,
Speaker 1: the clashing agendas of mayors and borough presidents, and battles
Speaker 1: with local community groups, it's how New York City got
Speaker 1: the expansive, complex rail infrastructure that's now seen on modern
Speaker 1: subway maps. This period of major growth lasted until the
Speaker 1: late nineteen forties, when annual rideships steadily increased year over
Speaker 1: year and hit its peak in nineteen eight with just
Speaker 1: over two billion passengers. So that's all good, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, I so I've lived in many big cities,
Speaker 1: and I will say I will sing the praises of
Speaker 1: New York subway system all day long. When I lived
Speaker 1: in New York, I lived on the l the Montrose Stop.
Speaker 1: It I feel like no other city I've ever lived
Speaker 1: and can compete. So they definitely did something right there.
Speaker 1: In my book, they did a lot right. It's it's
Speaker 1: fucked up in a lot of ways. Now, as they
Speaker 1: kind of pointed out to add, like a mile is
Speaker 1: going to cause billions of dollars in take ten years
Speaker 1: right where they built most of it in like this
Speaker 1: very rapid period, right, and we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: why it's so hard to expand the subway and why
Speaker 1: it's so hard to maintain it, right, because this is
Speaker 1: another complained people have today is that like, yeah, we
Speaker 1: built this great subway system and we're not properly maintaining it. Right.
Speaker 1: So that's definitely that is the story when I just
Speaker 1: read as the story of like how New York subway
Speaker 1: got to be such an impressive piece of public works
Speaker 1: and now we're going to talk about how it got
Speaker 1: sucked over. Um, But first, you know who else got
Speaker 1: sucked over? Bridget, tell me the products and services that
Speaker 1: support this podcast. Sophie seems fine with us. Okay, we're going,
Speaker 1: Oh boy, how you doing, Bridget. I'm doing well. You're
Speaker 1: doing well. I'm doing well. Let's talk about the subway.
Speaker 1: So the period in which the subway is growing in
Speaker 1: its fastest rate is also the period this is, like
Speaker 1: the thirties and in the early to mid forties, in
Speaker 1: which Bob Moses is centralizing power around him within the
Speaker 1: increasingly influential Parks Department, and the chief triumphs that he
Speaker 1: carries out in this period are well known to anyone
Speaker 1: who lives in or is even visited New York City today,
Speaker 1: particularly the well loved Jones Beach State Park. He's the
Speaker 1: guy who builds that ship. Um. But here's the thing
Speaker 1: that sent many a fun evening there. It's a lovely park.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing. Bob Moses hated the subway system, and
Speaker 1: he hates public transit in general. It doesn't like busses either.
Speaker 1: He never learned to drive himself. But since he's again
Speaker 1: he's rich, he always has like a driver, and that's
Speaker 1: how he prefers to get around. And he doesn't really
Speaker 1: think people should have public transportation, doesn't think it's a
Speaker 1: great idea. So when he starts work on Jones Beach
Speaker 1: in the late nineteen twenties, it opens a nine subway.
Speaker 1: And this is that period again in which subway in
Speaker 1: public transit access is massively expanding in New York. But
Speaker 1: inside Jones's plan, moses plans for Jones Park is contained
Speaker 1: a major strike against the idea that poor citizens should
Speaker 1: have access to the same parts of the state as
Speaker 1: wealthy ones. And I want to quote now from a
Speaker 1: write up in the Yale Law Journal. Moses set forth
Speaker 1: specifications for bridge overpasses on Long Island which were designed
Speaker 1: to hang low so that the twelve foot tall buses
Speaker 1: in use at the time could not fit under them.
Speaker 1: One consequence was to limit the access of racial minorities
Speaker 1: and low income groups who often use public transit to
Speaker 1: Jones Beach. Moses is widely acclaimed public park. Moses made
Speaker 1: doubly sure of his result by vetoing a proposed extension
Speaker 1: of the Long Island Railroad to Jones Beach. Moses biographers
Speaker 1: suggest that his decision to favor upper and middle class
Speaker 1: white people who owned cars at the expense of the
Speaker 1: poor and African Americans was due to his social class
Speaker 1: bias and racial prejudice. So he built this park and
Speaker 1: then makes it very difficult for black people to get there. Well,
Speaker 1: it's exactly like what you were saying, how like land
Speaker 1: use and public parks sound really great and everybody can
Speaker 1: get behind them, but they are also so effectively weaponized
Speaker 1: to you know, further racism and classism and all those
Speaker 1: other isms that we all hate. Like it's such a
Speaker 1: it's such an effective way of you know, consolidating power
Speaker 1: and keeping people out. And it's it's also you can
Speaker 1: see how Mark what he's doing is because he's like,
Speaker 1: I'm not banning people from the park, right, this is
Speaker 1: not a segregated it's in New York, you know, you're
Speaker 1: not kind of it's not segregated here, Like, this is
Speaker 1: not a park in which black people are not allowed,
Speaker 1: nor is it a park that poor people are not allowed.
Speaker 1: But it is a park that I'm going to veto
Speaker 1: train access to and I'm going to make it physically
Speaker 1: impossible for buses to reach it. And thus, as a result,
Speaker 1: it becomes a park that only middle class and upper
Speaker 1: class people can get to because they have the cars,
Speaker 1: you know. Um, and that's smart. That way you get
Speaker 1: to be like, well, here in New York, we're not like,
Speaker 1: we're not like they are in in in in Atlanta
Speaker 1: or Dallas or anyone's like segregated racist Southern states, and
Speaker 1: people in the people in York love to say that
Speaker 1: ship like, oh, like the South, they're so racist, They're
Speaker 1: not here in New York. No. And every now and
Speaker 1: then you're gonna get like, you know, some a black
Speaker 1: family who does well and has a car, and it's like, look,
Speaker 1: they could go to Jones Beach. Of course they can
Speaker 1: go to Jones Beach. You know. It's like, so there's
Speaker 1: no problem here. Yeah, um yeah, it's cool. Uh So,
Speaker 1: instead of garnering support to pass a law bann poor
Speaker 1: people or people of color from the places where he
Speaker 1: did not want them, Moses used his power as an
Speaker 1: architect to make it difficult for individuals to reach the
Speaker 1: places that he desired to exclude them from. In his
Speaker 1: creation of Jones Beach Park, Robert Moses becomes the founder
Speaker 1: of a discipline that is today called exclusionary architecture. The
Speaker 1: basic idea is this, if the government cannot legally stop
Speaker 1: people from being somewhere, city planners can accomplish that same
Speaker 1: goal by designing communities in such a way that it
Speaker 1: inherently excludes undesirable people. So in Portland right now, there's
Speaker 1: a couple of parks that like homeless people have been
Speaker 1: camping in and after the cops beat them up and
Speaker 1: cleared them out, rich people in the neighborhood have illegally
Speaker 1: been putting out like planters and stuff and filling them
Speaker 1: with like gravel and dirt in areas where like otherwise
Speaker 1: it would be possible to lay down um to claim
Speaker 1: to like, no, we're just trying to beautify our neighborhood
Speaker 1: by putting in like plants and stuff. And it's like no, no, no,
Speaker 1: you guys are illegally adding a bunch of infrastructure to
Speaker 1: the park in order to make it more difficult. It's
Speaker 1: like putting in a bench and then like illegally or
Speaker 1: like adding in like those things in the middle of
Speaker 1: it to stop people from sleeping on it or something
Speaker 1: totally here and d see, they have this thing they
Speaker 1: do where they install sprinklers, but there's not really green space.
Speaker 1: It'll be like on concrete plazas where on howse people
Speaker 1: just happened together and it's like, no, no, we're just
Speaker 1: watering the concrete sidewalk constantly. Nothing nothing to see here.
Speaker 1: It's just a normal sprinkler, not on grass, and it's
Speaker 1: obviously exclusionary architecture. Who knows, Like it's impossible to say
Speaker 1: like we're the first people who ever did it. I'm
Speaker 1: sure you could find examples of this in many societies
Speaker 1: throughout history. But Robert Moses is the one who kind
Speaker 1: of like turns it into an art form, you know,
Speaker 1: because he's good at this ship. This is not this
Speaker 1: is not putting out a planter. This isn't crude. This
Speaker 1: is like artful designing of a city in such a
Speaker 1: way that you both expand its green spaces and like
Speaker 1: beautify it while also locking certain people into areas where
Speaker 1: you want to keep the poor. You know. Um, he's
Speaker 1: very good at this thing that he's going to do. Now,
Speaker 1: I should not hear that Moses is biographer. Robert Caro
Speaker 1: is the first person who starts making these claims about Moses.
Speaker 1: He writes this massive books, like fourteen hundred pages called
Speaker 1: the Power Broker, which is like, after Moses's retirement kind
Speaker 1: of blows a hole in the guy's legacy because he
Speaker 1: had been seen as like the man who built New York.
Speaker 1: And then Carol writes this book. He wins a Pulitzer
Speaker 1: for it. Um, it's a pretty groundbreaking piece of reporting.
Speaker 1: And if you have the time to go through thirteen
Speaker 1: hundred pages about like this guy's life, it's it's pretty
Speaker 1: interesting read. Um. Now, in recent years, some individuals have
Speaker 1: sought to rehabilitate Robert Moses and and critique and because
Speaker 1: Caro again wins a Pulitzer, Um, there's very little that
Speaker 1: they can kind of criticize, so they'll kind of poke
Speaker 1: around the edges of his research to claim that, like
Speaker 1: he's exaggerating the degree to which this guy was, like
Speaker 1: to which this guy they're not. You can't argue that
Speaker 1: he wasn't racist, but you can like be like, well, actually,
Speaker 1: the consequences of his racism weren't as bad as Carol claims.
Speaker 1: And one claim that these folks will make trying to
Speaker 1: defend Robert Moses today is that Moses is his bridges
Speaker 1: were not too low for buses to pass underneath. Um,
Speaker 1: and it is true that a number of the bridges
Speaker 1: on the route to Jones Beach Park are tall enough
Speaker 1: for twelve foot tall buses to pass underneath. But Thomas J. Campanella,
Speaker 1: a Cornell University historian of city planning, wrote an article
Speaker 1: for Bloomberg in two thousands seventeen where he tests all
Speaker 1: these theories once and for all. He studied twenty bridges, viaducts,
Speaker 1: and over passes on other parkways built elsewhere in New
Speaker 1: York State at the time and compared them to the
Speaker 1: twenty original bridges and overpasses that Moses built for the
Speaker 1: Southern State Parkway, which is kind of on the way
Speaker 1: to the Jones Beach Park. And he finds that the
Speaker 1: clearances on all of the bridges Moses had built in
Speaker 1: the Southern State Parkway are way lower. Quote. The parkways
Speaker 1: I looked at were built in roughly the same era
Speaker 1: as the Southern State, especially Sawmill and hutch In fact,
Speaker 1: the Westchester Parkways set most of the standards for parkway
Speaker 1: designed for years in the United States. The lower overpasses
Speaker 1: on the Southern State Parkway are a substantial deviation from President.
Speaker 1: So He's like, if you actually look at these like
Speaker 1: the bridges he built in the specific area are notable
Speaker 1: the lower um. Now, the Washington Post quotes a guy
Speaker 1: named burn Ward George's, a German sociology professor, arguing back
Speaker 1: against this, and and George's initially had claimed like this.
Speaker 1: This Washington Post article is funny because it's talking about
Speaker 1: the guys who are defending Moses. And then like the
Speaker 1: people who have repeatedly proved that no, no, no, he
Speaker 1: did do this in in an exclusionary way. And like
Speaker 1: first the Post quotes him as saying that, like, Moses
Speaker 1: didn't build any bridges lower than his colleagues did at
Speaker 1: the time, Like that's a lot. He built the same
Speaker 1: size bridges as everyone. They were just shorter back then.
Speaker 1: And then when the Washington Post brings up camp in
Speaker 1: Ella's research and was like, no, like this guy studied
Speaker 1: them and his bridges are way shorter. Um. When they
Speaker 1: tell George's that, he responds, quote, Okay, true, the bridges
Speaker 1: were low, but each had to be built low differently.
Speaker 1: Moses took great care that each and every bridge was
Speaker 1: individually fitted into its natural context. Standardized unicity, as it were,
Speaker 1: was part of an artfully laid out nature. One can
Speaker 1: show more generally that when it came to parkway building,
Speaker 1: bridge building, culture was connected to a specific politics of nature.
Speaker 1: So first he's like, his bridges weren't any lower than
Speaker 1: anyone else. Is that's a myth? And then when people
Speaker 1: are like, well they were though, he's like, well he
Speaker 1: had to because it was pretty right, Like he had
Speaker 1: to because it looked good. Oh, and I think, I mean,
Speaker 1: like you're talking about how I mean, the word artful
Speaker 1: is the only word I could really used to describe it.
Speaker 1: But you know, I think it was I can't remember
Speaker 1: who it was, but um, some shitty right wing politician
Speaker 1: was like, oh, they're saying that the highways are racist.
Speaker 1: And the plausible deniability here of what he's doing of like,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, you don't have to come out
Speaker 1: and outright say I am trying to keep poor people
Speaker 1: and black people and brown people out. But because of
Speaker 1: the way that it's it's done, even now, people deny
Speaker 1: that the reality of what's going on, and it's so
Speaker 1: easy to deny I think it really, it really is
Speaker 1: an art form. Yeah, it's he's very good at it.
Speaker 1: And again, like when you actually challenge people and like
Speaker 1: do the reasons like again you can you can show yes,
Speaker 1: he obvious, like these were built with racism in my
Speaker 1: and um, and they just keep moving the goalposts like
Speaker 1: they do forever, and like the argument of these like
Speaker 1: biggots always comes down and again, not all of them
Speaker 1: are racially bigoted, some of them just hate the poor. Um,
Speaker 1: but the argument always comes down to, like, well, it's
Speaker 1: prettier this way, right, it's prettier if we keep certain
Speaker 1: people out. And don't we deserve we we've spent so
Speaker 1: much money on our homes. We we deserve to have
Speaker 1: our home values increase. We deserve to live this with it.
Speaker 1: We deserve to have it be prettier. And maybe that
Speaker 1: means other people can't afford houses. Maybe it means the
Speaker 1: homeless crisis expands. Maybe it means that like folks are
Speaker 1: like forced into certain neighborhoods where they lack access to
Speaker 1: grocery stores and other kind of like necessities. Um, but
Speaker 1: don't we deserve to have pretty things? You know, And
Speaker 1: it's not pretty if they're here, it's not pretty. If
Speaker 1: they have housing they can afford, it's not you know,
Speaker 1: Like that's the thing. Anyway, bridget you got any pluggable
Speaker 1: to plug. That's part one. Oh yeah, I guess I
Speaker 1: should plug my podcast. There are no girls on the internet.
Speaker 1: You can check out my heart radio. Um yeah. You
Speaker 1: can follow me on social media at Bridget Marie in
Speaker 1: d C or at Bridget Marie on Twitter. Well you
Speaker 1: can follow her and you can check out her podcasts,
Speaker 1: and eventually you're gonna be able to hear Bridget in
Speaker 1: a new podcast. But where we are bound by sacred
Speaker 1: oaths to keep that silent until now the CIA has
Speaker 1: a gun to my head. Um, I'm not allowed to
Speaker 1: say anything else but um, the CIA being Sophie. Um.
Speaker 1: The face that Sophie just made, I knew it was coming.
Speaker 1: That's why I was like, alright, sometimes is my fault?
Speaker 1: Got it? Next? Yeah, like all powerful men behind me
Speaker 1: as a woman that I'm blaming for things for no reason.
Speaker 1: How are we doing, Sophie. I'm gonna need like three
Speaker 1: weeks of their Peter process was a lot. That was
Speaker 1: a lot. Um, Well, thank you for coming on, Bridget.
Speaker 1: I'm excited to tell you more about Bobby mos S
Speaker 1: in part two. But um, thank you all for listening.
Speaker 1: I have a novel After the Revolution. You can find
Speaker 1: it on a k Press if you go to their website.
Speaker 1: You can find it on Amazon. You just just google
Speaker 1: After the Revolution Novel and you'll be able to buy
Speaker 1: it some fuckingwhere anyway. Go to hell, shit sorry. Behind
Speaker 1: the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media. For
Speaker 1: more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone
Speaker 1: media dot com, or check us out on the I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.