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