1
00:00:15,920 --> 00:00:21,919
Speaker 1: Pushkin Ben Mata Haffer Here before we get into this episode,

2
00:00:22,040 --> 00:00:23,639
Speaker 1: I wanted to let you know that you can hear

3
00:00:23,759 --> 00:00:27,360
Speaker 1: all episodes of Revisionist History the Staten Island Problem ad

4
00:00:27,360 --> 00:00:31,040
Speaker 1: free right now. By signing up for Pushkin Plus. You'll

5
00:00:31,040 --> 00:00:34,360
Speaker 1: also get bonus episodes, full audiobooks, and other binges from

6
00:00:34,360 --> 00:00:37,920
Speaker 1: your favorite Pushkin hosts and authors. Plus, your support helps

7
00:00:37,920 --> 00:00:40,800
Speaker 1: independent shows like us continue making the stories you love.

8
00:00:41,360 --> 00:00:44,360
Speaker 1: Sign up and save on the Revisionist History Show page

9
00:00:44,400 --> 00:00:48,080
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts, where at Pushkin dot fm, Slash plus

10
00:00:48,640 --> 00:00:51,560
Speaker 1: use the code R twenty five for twenty five percent

11
00:00:51,600 --> 00:00:55,840
Speaker 1: off an annual subscription. All right, let's get into the series.

12
00:00:57,200 --> 00:00:59,320
Speaker 1: One day I came across a box of tapes in

13
00:00:59,360 --> 00:01:02,560
Speaker 1: the College of Staten Island Archives. They were these mostly

14
00:01:02,680 --> 00:01:05,800
Speaker 1: unmarked VHS tapes jammed in no particular order into a

15
00:01:05,800 --> 00:01:09,200
Speaker 1: cardboard box. The extremely helpful archivist set me up with

16
00:01:09,240 --> 00:01:12,839
Speaker 1: an old v I popped in the tape and I

17
00:01:12,880 --> 00:01:16,160
Speaker 1: met Dan Singletary.

18
00:01:16,560 --> 00:01:18,840
Speaker 2: Do you realize? Nineteen eighty six, a federal law was

19
00:01:18,880 --> 00:01:23,120
Speaker 2: passed mandating every school system in the country provide safe

20
00:01:23,160 --> 00:01:26,520
Speaker 2: schoolrooms free of asbestos. The only school district in the

21
00:01:26,639 --> 00:01:28,119
Speaker 2: entire country that did not comply.

22
00:01:28,680 --> 00:01:30,000
Speaker 3: You know it New York City.

23
00:01:31,440 --> 00:01:36,760
Speaker 1: This guy, Dan Singletary. He looked like a cowboy, big mustache, lanky.

24
00:01:37,560 --> 00:01:40,439
Speaker 1: I remembered seeing his name all over newspapers from the time,

25
00:01:40,960 --> 00:01:44,359
Speaker 1: usually described vaguely as an artist who wanted Staten Island

26
00:01:44,400 --> 00:01:47,119
Speaker 1: to secede, but no one ever said what exactly his

27
00:01:47,280 --> 00:01:51,840
Speaker 1: art was. This intrigued me. And here he was at

28
00:01:51,840 --> 00:01:54,920
Speaker 1: a debate on secession, going off about the shoddy schools.

29
00:01:56,360 --> 00:02:00,680
Speaker 2: Why because of mismanagement, because of ineptitude. There is no

30
00:02:00,800 --> 00:02:02,800
Speaker 2: way in the world that staff Mound would be able

31
00:02:02,840 --> 00:02:04,760
Speaker 2: to allow that, none whatsoever.

32
00:02:05,760 --> 00:02:08,400
Speaker 1: And as I watched those tapes, it became clear to

33
00:02:08,440 --> 00:02:10,680
Speaker 1: me that Dan Singletary it was really the voice of

34
00:02:10,720 --> 00:02:11,280
Speaker 1: this movement.

35
00:02:12,160 --> 00:02:14,360
Speaker 2: Well, if there's a son of secession, it's got to

36
00:02:14,360 --> 00:02:15,359
Speaker 2: be Dan Singletary.

37
00:02:15,800 --> 00:02:16,000
Speaker 4: Dance.

38
00:02:16,040 --> 00:02:20,000
Speaker 2: Singletary said, if you're against secession, you're in favor of

39
00:02:20,120 --> 00:02:21,520
Speaker 2: keeping things the way they are.

40
00:02:23,960 --> 00:02:26,480
Speaker 1: There were many problems with keeping things the way they were,

41
00:02:26,600 --> 00:02:30,160
Speaker 1: at least as Staten Islanders saw it, and nothing was

42
00:02:30,200 --> 00:02:35,000
Speaker 1: talked about more than the dump fresh kills. It was

43
00:02:35,040 --> 00:02:38,320
Speaker 1: so remarkable that Ripley's Believe It or Not featured it

44
00:02:39,080 --> 00:02:41,440
Speaker 1: the scale of it could not be believed.

45
00:02:41,920 --> 00:02:46,160
Speaker 5: Eleven thousand tons a day, six days a week, and

46
00:02:46,240 --> 00:02:50,120
Speaker 5: that's expected to more than double soon to over twenty

47
00:02:50,200 --> 00:02:52,079
Speaker 5: two thousand tons a day.

48
00:02:54,280 --> 00:02:57,600
Speaker 1: Dan Singletary would parade national reporters out to see the dump.

49
00:02:57,840 --> 00:03:00,560
Speaker 1: Everyone wanted to see the dump. It was the symbol

50
00:03:00,600 --> 00:03:04,440
Speaker 1: of Staten Island secession. Over seven million people lived in

51
00:03:04,480 --> 00:03:07,680
Speaker 1: New York City in the nineteen eighties. Every day they

52
00:03:07,680 --> 00:03:10,520
Speaker 1: threw stuff out. Most of that stuff wound up at

53
00:03:10,560 --> 00:03:13,560
Speaker 1: the Fresh Kills landfill. The sight of it alone was

54
00:03:13,680 --> 00:03:15,840
Speaker 1: enough to stop visitors in their tracks.

55
00:03:17,680 --> 00:03:21,360
Speaker 6: Now the garbage here is piled pretty deep or pretty high,

56
00:03:21,400 --> 00:03:23,799
Speaker 6: depending on how you look at it. By the year

57
00:03:23,840 --> 00:03:27,760
Speaker 6: two thousands, some of the piles could be over five

58
00:03:28,000 --> 00:03:32,200
Speaker 6: hundred feet above sea level, which will make them believe.

59
00:03:31,880 --> 00:03:32,440
Speaker 4: It or not.

60
00:03:33,680 --> 00:03:36,560
Speaker 6: The tallest mountains on the entire eastern shore.

61
00:03:38,840 --> 00:03:41,160
Speaker 1: People said you could see the dump from outer space.

62
00:03:41,520 --> 00:03:44,720
Speaker 1: Ornithologists wanted to study it because supposedly it was the

63
00:03:44,760 --> 00:03:49,520
Speaker 1: East Coast's largest collection of seagulls. Stann Islanders meanwhile, rolled

64
00:03:49,600 --> 00:03:52,200
Speaker 1: up their windows when they passed it. It was next

65
00:03:52,200 --> 00:03:53,880
Speaker 1: to the mall, and when you went to the mall,

66
00:03:54,000 --> 00:03:56,320
Speaker 1: you'd cover your mouth and nose and sprint from the

67
00:03:56,360 --> 00:03:59,280
Speaker 1: car to the front door. It was unclear then if

68
00:03:59,320 --> 00:04:01,640
Speaker 1: garbage juice was leaking out of the trash mountains and

69
00:04:01,680 --> 00:04:05,560
Speaker 1: into the groundwater. The people were looking into it. Spoiler

70
00:04:05,600 --> 00:04:09,680
Speaker 1: alert it was, and rather than coming up with alternatives,

71
00:04:10,200 --> 00:04:13,160
Speaker 1: all the ingenuity in Manhattan seemed to go towards dumping

72
00:04:13,320 --> 00:04:17,999
Speaker 1: more faster on Staten Island, and Dan Singletary was paying

73
00:04:18,200 --> 00:04:19,520
Speaker 1: very close attention to this.

74
00:04:20,400 --> 00:04:23,080
Speaker 7: We have a environmental disaster sitting on our shores.

75
00:04:23,360 --> 00:04:24,440
Speaker 1: We all recognize that.

76
00:04:24,560 --> 00:04:26,800
Speaker 7: We recognize the fact that it outside of a great

77
00:04:26,840 --> 00:04:28,560
Speaker 7: wall in China's the only thing you can see from

78
00:04:28,600 --> 00:04:29,920
Speaker 7: outer space. It's a disaster.

79
00:04:32,400 --> 00:04:34,279
Speaker 1: A weird thing happens to me when I work on

80
00:04:34,360 --> 00:04:37,920
Speaker 1: stories like this, People who aren't famous at all become

81
00:04:38,000 --> 00:04:41,080
Speaker 1: like celebrities. In my mind. Here was a man on

82
00:04:41,080 --> 00:04:43,960
Speaker 1: a misfit island ranting about a mountain of trash thirty

83
00:04:44,040 --> 00:04:47,560
Speaker 1: years ago, and because I've turned my bizarre fixations into

84
00:04:47,640 --> 00:04:50,120
Speaker 1: a career, over the course of a year, I had

85
00:04:50,160 --> 00:04:53,120
Speaker 1: read so many articles about Dan Singletary and watched so

86
00:04:53,240 --> 00:04:56,839
Speaker 1: many videos of him arguing about Staten Island secession that

87
00:04:56,920 --> 00:04:59,880
Speaker 1: he became a kind of folk hero to me, wandering

88
00:04:59,880 --> 00:05:03,039
Speaker 1: around the island doing art looking like a cowboy with

89
00:05:03,080 --> 00:05:06,839
Speaker 1: his huge mustache. I wanted to track him down to

90
00:05:07,000 --> 00:05:10,720
Speaker 1: understand the mind of a secessionist. I kept striking out

91
00:05:12,960 --> 00:05:17,640
Speaker 1: until one day, in an article in Rural Heritage magazine

92
00:05:17,680 --> 00:05:22,120
Speaker 1: about American milking Devin Cows, I came across a reference

93
00:05:22,440 --> 00:05:24,680
Speaker 1: to a farmer named Dan Singletary.

94
00:05:25,600 --> 00:05:28,720
Speaker 8: I found a number, and I called we were the

95
00:05:28,800 --> 00:05:31,880
Speaker 8: smallest borough. Like on the face of it, it was

96
00:05:31,920 --> 00:05:35,160
Speaker 8: a disaster. You know, they could walk all over us.

97
00:05:36,040 --> 00:05:42,880
Speaker 1: Singletary lives. You're listening to revisionist history. This is our

98
00:05:42,920 --> 00:05:46,880
Speaker 1: mini series, The Staten Island Problem. I'm Ben Matt of Haffrey.

99
00:05:48,960 --> 00:05:52,159
Speaker 1: Everyone has a problem with the place they live. This year,

100
00:05:52,200 --> 00:05:54,400
Speaker 1: I paid a lot of taxes to a government waging

101
00:05:54,400 --> 00:05:57,480
Speaker 1: a war I have no interest in supporting. Maybe you

102
00:05:57,520 --> 00:06:00,640
Speaker 1: think the schools in your neighborhood suck. Maybe you hate

103
00:06:00,640 --> 00:06:03,680
Speaker 1: the police. Maybe there's a methadone clinic down the block

104
00:06:03,720 --> 00:06:06,719
Speaker 1: and you can't stand it. Maybe you think the things

105
00:06:06,720 --> 00:06:09,560
Speaker 1: your neighbor believes are fundamentally evil and he thinks the

106
00:06:09,960 --> 00:06:14,599
Speaker 1: about you. Those feelings have reached a real boiling point

107
00:06:14,600 --> 00:06:17,480
Speaker 1: in this country on all sides. And this is a

108
00:06:17,560 --> 00:06:19,920
Speaker 1: story about a place with a lot of those kinds

109
00:06:19,920 --> 00:06:24,200
Speaker 1: of problems, saying you know what, screw it, we're out.

110
00:06:25,000 --> 00:06:27,839
Speaker 1: What does that look like? Who chooses to do that?

111
00:06:28,240 --> 00:06:33,200
Speaker 1: And why this episode the things that are meant to

112
00:06:33,280 --> 00:06:37,680
Speaker 1: keep our politics together and why some people want out?

113
00:06:40,480 --> 00:06:52,440
Speaker 1: Episode two, A New Map. When I finally did meet

114
00:06:52,520 --> 00:06:54,839
Speaker 1: Dan Singletary, he was living on a farm with his

115
00:06:54,880 --> 00:06:58,400
Speaker 1: wife Alice, way out in rural upstate New York. I

116
00:06:58,400 --> 00:07:00,120
Speaker 1: had brought the old videos i'd found with me.

117
00:07:01,080 --> 00:07:02,719
Speaker 8: I don't know if I ever even want to see.

118
00:07:03,400 --> 00:07:06,320
Speaker 8: It's a must see the videos there.

119
00:07:06,520 --> 00:07:10,000
Speaker 1: They're sort of fantastic. I don't look like I do.

120
00:07:10,200 --> 00:07:13,560
Speaker 1: You're recognizable. He still looked like a cowboy to me.

121
00:07:14,760 --> 00:07:17,440
Speaker 1: So far working on the project, I'd only heard the

122
00:07:17,440 --> 00:07:20,120
Speaker 1: New York City view of secession. I wanted to hear

123
00:07:20,160 --> 00:07:22,680
Speaker 1: the Staten Island one. We sat down at the kitchen

124
00:07:22,680 --> 00:07:24,400
Speaker 1: table and started to talk.

125
00:07:25,240 --> 00:07:28,240
Speaker 8: Well, we had to do something one way or another,

126
00:07:28,440 --> 00:07:30,760
Speaker 8: because we were the losers.

127
00:07:31,760 --> 00:07:34,280
Speaker 1: The Singletaries had moved to Staten Island because they had

128
00:07:34,280 --> 00:07:37,080
Speaker 1: two kids and wanted a pleasant place to live, and

129
00:07:37,120 --> 00:07:39,920
Speaker 1: they liked what they found there. Alice worked in the schools,

130
00:07:40,000 --> 00:07:43,840
Speaker 1: eventually as a principal. He was a nice community, except

131
00:07:43,880 --> 00:07:45,240
Speaker 1: of course, for the dump.

132
00:07:46,080 --> 00:07:48,560
Speaker 8: And I had a friend that lived around the corner

133
00:07:48,600 --> 00:07:50,640
Speaker 8: that worked out there, and he said, hey, Danny, come

134
00:07:51,120 --> 00:07:53,680
Speaker 8: on out here and have lunch with us. So I

135
00:07:53,760 --> 00:07:56,080
Speaker 8: came out, went out one day and the fresh skills

136
00:07:56,520 --> 00:07:59,160
Speaker 8: and met the guys in the bar that you know.

137
00:07:59,280 --> 00:08:01,560
Speaker 8: We came in and there we started making They were

138
00:08:01,600 --> 00:08:04,800
Speaker 8: all Italian. They all made you know, sausages and stuff.

139
00:08:04,800 --> 00:08:05,960
Speaker 8: And I thought this was great.

140
00:08:06,960 --> 00:08:09,520
Speaker 1: All of a sudden a barge full of trash showed

141
00:08:09,560 --> 00:08:12,640
Speaker 1: up and the rats are jumping off or kicked in

142
00:08:12,680 --> 00:08:13,880
Speaker 1: the rats in the water.

143
00:08:14,160 --> 00:08:16,960
Speaker 8: You've never seen anything more disgusting on all your life.

144
00:08:17,680 --> 00:08:19,840
Speaker 8: And it had, you know, mostly done. And I said,

145
00:08:19,880 --> 00:08:22,200
Speaker 8: where are you going? I said, I'm sick to my stomach.

146
00:08:22,200 --> 00:08:23,760
Speaker 8: I'm going to go to all home. I said, I

147
00:08:23,800 --> 00:08:26,840
Speaker 8: can't eat any lunch now. Oh come on, daddy, you know,

148
00:08:27,120 --> 00:08:31,320
Speaker 8: I said no. But it was pretty pretty incredible.

149
00:08:32,160 --> 00:08:34,800
Speaker 1: Of course, it wasn't just the dump that got under

150
00:08:34,840 --> 00:08:38,440
Speaker 1: Staten Islander's skin. There were developers cramming the island with

151
00:08:38,480 --> 00:08:43,800
Speaker 1: crummy houses or sewers the constant disrespect and also the

152
00:08:43,839 --> 00:08:46,760
Speaker 1: reality of living in the city with a lot of homelessness.

153
00:08:47,280 --> 00:08:53,040
Speaker 8: People decided that the ferry terminal was a great place

154
00:08:53,319 --> 00:08:57,520
Speaker 8: to feed the people that needed food with the almost people,

155
00:08:58,000 --> 00:09:02,120
Speaker 8: and it impacted with the people from Staten Island.

156
00:09:02,880 --> 00:09:05,880
Speaker 1: Staten Islanders would walk essentially through a soup kitchen to

157
00:09:05,920 --> 00:09:07,800
Speaker 1: catch the ferry home from Lower Manhattan.

158
00:09:08,559 --> 00:09:10,719
Speaker 8: They worked all the law. They wanted to come home

159
00:09:10,800 --> 00:09:12,920
Speaker 8: and you know, wait for their kids or do whatever,

160
00:09:13,520 --> 00:09:16,719
Speaker 8: and they got all these you know, all these bums

161
00:09:16,719 --> 00:09:19,399
Speaker 8: are all around, and it smells like urn, and you know,

162
00:09:19,479 --> 00:09:23,079
Speaker 8: it's just absolutely terrible. So I went in twice to

163
00:09:24,000 --> 00:09:26,519
Speaker 8: meetings of the community board and I said, guys, what

164
00:09:26,559 --> 00:09:28,879
Speaker 8: can we do? I said, can you find some other place?

165
00:09:29,160 --> 00:09:31,160
Speaker 8: I said, I'm not against any of that stuff, but

166
00:09:31,199 --> 00:09:32,800
Speaker 8: this is not the right place.

167
00:09:34,239 --> 00:09:36,640
Speaker 1: The singletary is kept using this word for what it

168
00:09:36,679 --> 00:09:39,880
Speaker 1: felt like in New York City at the time, sand papering.

169
00:09:40,920 --> 00:09:45,559
Speaker 8: It was that constant sandpapering. You know, of sensitivities.

170
00:09:46,079 --> 00:09:48,319
Speaker 1: What do you mean sandpapering with sensitivities.

171
00:09:48,880 --> 00:09:53,080
Speaker 8: Well, it's it's always being rubbed by something. Ah, you know,

172
00:09:53,800 --> 00:09:58,640
Speaker 8: it's just around you saying back off or you know it's.

173
00:09:57,599 --> 00:10:01,119
Speaker 1: Yeah, you feel like the environment is real express somewhere.

174
00:10:01,239 --> 00:10:03,079
Speaker 8: Yeah.

175
00:10:03,640 --> 00:10:07,080
Speaker 1: And around that time Singletary learned that there might be

176
00:10:07,160 --> 00:10:10,880
Speaker 1: a way to fix all this. A beloved lawmaker on

177
00:10:10,920 --> 00:10:13,880
Speaker 1: the island named John Marky had come up with a plan,

178
00:10:14,319 --> 00:10:19,839
Speaker 1: a pathway to secede. It had two parts. First, Staten

179
00:10:19,880 --> 00:10:22,199
Speaker 1: Islanders would be allowed to vote on whether or not

180
00:10:22,239 --> 00:10:26,800
Speaker 1: to study secession and make a charter for a new city. Then,

181
00:10:27,079 --> 00:10:31,839
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety three they'd vote on that plan. Against

182
00:10:31,839 --> 00:10:35,880
Speaker 1: all the odds, the state approved this proposal. Now it

183
00:10:35,959 --> 00:10:38,160
Speaker 1: was on the secessionists to whip the votes.

184
00:10:39,239 --> 00:10:45,200
Speaker 8: Our dining table became the war room, Am I correct? Yeah?

185
00:10:45,719 --> 00:10:49,920
Speaker 1: Singletary began to organize an official secession party. If they

186
00:10:49,920 --> 00:10:52,800
Speaker 1: got enough signatures, they could get politicians on their party

187
00:10:52,839 --> 00:10:55,440
Speaker 1: line on the ballot and raise the profile of the issue.

188
00:10:57,079 --> 00:10:59,840
Speaker 8: I was out almost every night for months, and we

189
00:10:59,920 --> 00:11:02,280
Speaker 8: had other people and other people, and we collected them

190
00:11:02,280 --> 00:11:04,959
Speaker 8: all and brought them back. And Alice's job was set

191
00:11:05,040 --> 00:11:07,199
Speaker 8: with these other ladies to go through and make sure

192
00:11:07,239 --> 00:11:10,679
Speaker 8: everything was signed correctly and dotted all the press of

193
00:11:10,679 --> 00:11:13,800
Speaker 8: that stuff. And they were drinking, you know, had a

194
00:11:13,839 --> 00:11:16,439
Speaker 8: beer and coffee and chatting it up. And you had

195
00:11:16,479 --> 00:11:18,559
Speaker 8: a great time, and you got the short end of

196
00:11:18,559 --> 00:11:18,920
Speaker 8: the stick.

197
00:11:20,559 --> 00:11:22,999
Speaker 1: You had a great time checking the signatures.

198
00:11:24,400 --> 00:11:26,559
Speaker 8: Go to work next day, keep doing the same thing.

199
00:11:29,040 --> 00:11:31,920
Speaker 1: They would have to collect several thousand signatures to make

200
00:11:31,920 --> 00:11:35,280
Speaker 1: the secession party in electoral reality, and they did.

201
00:11:36,640 --> 00:11:40,199
Speaker 8: When we took all those boxes into the Board of Elections,

202
00:11:40,559 --> 00:11:42,720
Speaker 8: they said, you got to be kidding. They put them

203
00:11:42,719 --> 00:11:44,960
Speaker 8: in that corner. I'm sure they just sat there.

204
00:11:45,280 --> 00:11:48,519
Speaker 4: We didn't think it could be done, so the table

205
00:11:48,679 --> 00:11:51,800
Speaker 4: didn't think what could be done to get any signatures.

206
00:11:55,359 --> 00:11:58,679
Speaker 1: I once read about this political science concept called the

207
00:11:58,760 --> 00:12:01,880
Speaker 1: logo map. The idea is that when we make a

208
00:12:01,920 --> 00:12:04,959
Speaker 1: map of a place, we show a simplified picture that

209
00:12:05,040 --> 00:12:07,879
Speaker 1: leaves out a lot of the actual territory. Think of

210
00:12:07,920 --> 00:12:10,960
Speaker 1: a map of the United States. What's on it? The

211
00:12:11,000 --> 00:12:15,519
Speaker 1: continental contiguous United States, not American Samoa, not the US

212
00:12:15,599 --> 00:12:19,280
Speaker 1: Virgin Islands, not Puerto Rico. Alaska gets put in a

213
00:12:19,280 --> 00:12:23,160
Speaker 1: little box. So does Hawaii, and Guam is nowhere to

214
00:12:23,199 --> 00:12:24,039
Speaker 1: be found.

215
00:12:24,880 --> 00:12:25,040
Speaker 9: Now.

216
00:12:25,079 --> 00:12:29,479
Speaker 1: Picture New York City. You're probably imagining the long, tall

217
00:12:29,520 --> 00:12:33,240
Speaker 1: island of Manhattan. Maybe you're seeing Brooklyn and Queens and

218
00:12:33,319 --> 00:12:36,479
Speaker 1: part of the Bronx. But you're almost certainly not seeing

219
00:12:36,520 --> 00:12:39,240
Speaker 1: Staten Island on the logo map of New York unless

220
00:12:39,239 --> 00:12:41,559
Speaker 1: it's been included in a tiny box in the bottom

221
00:12:41,640 --> 00:12:44,559
Speaker 1: left corner like on the old subway maps, and even

222
00:12:44,599 --> 00:12:49,399
Speaker 1: then never at scale. The logo map reflects the psychological

223
00:12:49,479 --> 00:12:52,400
Speaker 1: reality for most New Yorkers when it comes to Staten Island.

224
00:12:52,880 --> 00:12:55,999
Speaker 1: It's that place miles out to sea, reachable only by

225
00:12:56,040 --> 00:12:58,800
Speaker 1: ship in what was in its day the longest suspension

226
00:12:58,800 --> 00:13:03,959
Speaker 1: bridge ever built. It's off screen by design, because the

227
00:13:04,000 --> 00:13:07,080
Speaker 1: whole point of throwing things out is you don't want

228
00:13:07,120 --> 00:13:10,839
Speaker 1: to see them anymore. The dump the metaphor for New

229
00:13:10,880 --> 00:13:14,200
Speaker 1: York City's relationship to Staten Island, the place they put

230
00:13:14,199 --> 00:13:17,920
Speaker 1: the things they don't want. Secession was about making a

231
00:13:17,959 --> 00:13:24,199
Speaker 1: whole new map. After the break the Supreme Court case

232
00:13:24,439 --> 00:13:38,920
Speaker 1: that set all this in motion in the eighteen nineties,

233
00:13:39,000 --> 00:13:41,599
Speaker 1: New York City did not exist, at least not like

234
00:13:41,599 --> 00:13:45,760
Speaker 1: it does today. Brooklyn and Manhattan were separate cities. Queen's

235
00:13:45,880 --> 00:13:48,400
Speaker 1: Staten Island and the Bronx had little to do with

236
00:13:48,479 --> 00:13:52,840
Speaker 1: each other. Everyone competed for the same resources, nobody really

237
00:13:52,839 --> 00:13:57,040
Speaker 1: coordinated how and this was a big problem. The harbor

238
00:13:57,120 --> 00:14:00,399
Speaker 1: was polluted, epidemics and crime. Waves didn't care that these

239
00:14:00,439 --> 00:14:04,120
Speaker 1: were different cities. They spread wherever they pleased. The competing

240
00:14:04,160 --> 00:14:07,920
Speaker 1: areas would bicker about water supply, which when it ran short,

241
00:14:08,199 --> 00:14:13,240
Speaker 1: let huge fires blaze up. So in the eighteen nineties

242
00:14:13,319 --> 00:14:16,079
Speaker 1: a wealthy group of Manhattanites came up with a plan.

243
00:14:16,880 --> 00:14:20,879
Speaker 1: They would convince these five disparate places to join into

244
00:14:21,000 --> 00:14:27,280
Speaker 1: one gigantic city. This was called consolidation. In eighteen ninety eight,

245
00:14:27,800 --> 00:14:32,360
Speaker 1: the greater New York City was born. But just like

246
00:14:32,440 --> 00:14:35,479
Speaker 1: when the United States came together, there was a concern,

247
00:14:36,359 --> 00:14:38,720
Speaker 1: how could the new boroughs be sure that they wouldn't

248
00:14:38,760 --> 00:14:43,280
Speaker 1: just be dominated by Manhattan. The answer was an obscure

249
00:14:43,359 --> 00:14:46,680
Speaker 1: legislative body known as the Board of Estimate.

250
00:14:49,680 --> 00:14:52,879
Speaker 9: Well, the Board of Estimate, for all intents and purposes,

251
00:14:53,320 --> 00:14:55,960
Speaker 9: was sort of designed like the US Senate.

252
00:14:56,600 --> 00:14:59,880
Speaker 1: Frank Sippola, who was the assistant press secretary for the

253
00:14:59,920 --> 00:15:02,680
Speaker 1: Staten Island Borough President about forty years ago.

254
00:15:03,440 --> 00:15:07,160
Speaker 9: Regardless of what the population of each borough was, the

255
00:15:07,200 --> 00:15:10,800
Speaker 9: borough president voted for the entire borough. He was the

256
00:15:10,960 --> 00:15:12,519
Speaker 9: mayor of that particular bar.

257
00:15:13,520 --> 00:15:15,600
Speaker 1: The deal that was struck at the dawn of the

258
00:15:15,600 --> 00:15:18,600
Speaker 1: city was that each borough president would have an equal

259
00:15:18,680 --> 00:15:22,040
Speaker 1: vote on the board, right alongside the mayor, the comptroller,

260
00:15:22,200 --> 00:15:25,880
Speaker 1: and the city council president. And to be clear, these

261
00:15:25,880 --> 00:15:29,800
Speaker 1: weren't just some perfunctory meetings. The compromise was that the

262
00:15:29,840 --> 00:15:33,080
Speaker 1: Board of Estimate held all the real power in the city,

263
00:15:33,479 --> 00:15:38,400
Speaker 1: the city's budget, the city's land, the city's operations. And

264
00:15:38,479 --> 00:15:41,280
Speaker 1: Sapola found himself attending meetings of the Board of Estimate

265
00:15:41,400 --> 00:15:42,080
Speaker 1: for his boss.

266
00:15:43,200 --> 00:15:46,160
Speaker 9: And you'd sit there as bus loads of New Yorkers

267
00:15:46,160 --> 00:15:54,080
Speaker 9: would show up and spend hours trashing you, hours just

268
00:15:54,239 --> 00:15:57,880
Speaker 9: talking about how your decisions are so shortsighted.

269
00:15:58,880 --> 00:16:01,239
Speaker 1: Citizens could weigh in on the important issues of the

270
00:16:01,320 --> 00:16:05,240
Speaker 1: day as the borough presidents deliberated in real time. It

271
00:16:05,359 --> 00:16:13,000
Speaker 1: was the pinnacle of democracy. What was it like in there?

272
00:16:13,760 --> 00:16:15,479
Speaker 8: It was brutal.

273
00:16:15,560 --> 00:16:18,600
Speaker 9: Then Sometimes the meetings went till two or three o'clock

274
00:16:18,640 --> 00:16:21,920
Speaker 9: in the morning. I remember once there was a guy

275
00:16:22,040 --> 00:16:24,680
Speaker 9: just had fallen asleep on one of the chairs, just

276
00:16:24,720 --> 00:16:25,320
Speaker 9: fell asleep.

277
00:16:26,600 --> 00:16:29,080
Speaker 1: The whole thing was kind of a sham. Frank wasn't

278
00:16:29,080 --> 00:16:31,800
Speaker 1: the borough president, he was just the assistant press guy.

279
00:16:32,359 --> 00:16:35,320
Speaker 1: And yet he was sitting up there because early in

280
00:16:35,359 --> 00:16:38,919
Speaker 1: the meeting, the borough presidents would all just disappear.

281
00:16:40,000 --> 00:16:43,280
Speaker 9: He'd show up, he'd sit there for about twenty fifty

282
00:16:43,280 --> 00:16:46,560
Speaker 9: to twenty or thirty minutes, and then somebody from his

283
00:16:46,720 --> 00:16:51,280
Speaker 9: cabinet in several places me would have to sit there

284
00:16:51,400 --> 00:16:54,840
Speaker 9: for the rest of the meeting, and he'd say, you're

285
00:16:54,840 --> 00:16:56,680
Speaker 9: going to vote know on this, yes on this, no

286
00:16:56,840 --> 00:16:59,000
Speaker 9: on that, yes on this, no on that. Okay.

287
00:17:00,239 --> 00:17:03,160
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, even if the borough presidents were doing what they

288
00:17:03,160 --> 00:17:05,040
Speaker 1: were supposed to be doing, they were still a big

289
00:17:05,080 --> 00:17:08,840
Speaker 1: problem because the burrows they represented were not at all

290
00:17:08,960 --> 00:17:12,480
Speaker 1: the same side. At the time, Brooklyn had two point

291
00:17:12,520 --> 00:17:16,320
Speaker 1: two million people, Staten Island had three hundred and fifty

292
00:17:16,320 --> 00:17:19,920
Speaker 1: two thousand, and yet the borough presidents each had the

293
00:17:20,000 --> 00:17:23,040
Speaker 1: same one vote on the Board of Estimate, which seemed

294
00:17:23,040 --> 00:17:26,639
Speaker 1: pretty unfair because Staten Island had way more power than

295
00:17:26,640 --> 00:17:29,600
Speaker 1: it should have given its size. They'd weigh in on

296
00:17:29,640 --> 00:17:32,680
Speaker 1: city wide issues and managed to use their power to

297
00:17:32,720 --> 00:17:35,320
Speaker 1: say no to a lot of things. They were the

298
00:17:35,320 --> 00:17:37,920
Speaker 1: only county in New York City that didn't have a jail,

299
00:17:38,000 --> 00:17:42,520
Speaker 1: for instance, and don't ask them about homeless shelters. All

300
00:17:42,520 --> 00:17:47,119
Speaker 1: this worked fine enough until this particular arrangement came to

301
00:17:47,160 --> 00:17:50,960
Speaker 1: the attention of the Supreme Court, and all hell broke loose.

302
00:17:54,320 --> 00:17:57,440
Speaker 10: Well here argument now in number eighty seven ten twenty two.

303
00:17:57,560 --> 00:17:59,800
Speaker 10: Board of Estimate of the City of New York versus

304
00:17:59,840 --> 00:18:04,560
Speaker 10: Beverly Morris, Number eighty seven eleven twelve Frank Ontario versus

305
00:18:04,600 --> 00:18:05,760
Speaker 10: Beverly Moras.

306
00:18:06,200 --> 00:18:08,960
Speaker 1: In the early nineteen eighties, the New York Civil Liberties

307
00:18:09,040 --> 00:18:11,920
Speaker 1: Union brought a lawsuit against the Board that said that

308
00:18:12,040 --> 00:18:14,560
Speaker 1: the fact that Staten Island got the same vote as

309
00:18:14,600 --> 00:18:18,600
Speaker 1: Brooklyn violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment,

310
00:18:18,880 --> 00:18:21,840
Speaker 1: One person, one vote. The case wound its way up

311
00:18:21,840 --> 00:18:24,560
Speaker 1: to the Supreme Court. The lawyer for New York City

312
00:18:24,680 --> 00:18:27,680
Speaker 1: begged the court to leave it alone. He said, if

313
00:18:27,680 --> 00:18:30,119
Speaker 1: you strike this down, the city's going to fall apart.

314
00:18:31,320 --> 00:18:35,440
Speaker 3: Every One has said that this structure is the glue

315
00:18:35,480 --> 00:18:37,600
Speaker 3: that has kept the City of New York together, and

316
00:18:37,720 --> 00:18:40,240
Speaker 3: don't change it. And oh, I'm in New.

317
00:18:40,200 --> 00:18:42,600
Speaker 10: York is going to disintegrative, that you lose this loss

318
00:18:42,600 --> 00:18:45,200
Speaker 10: of the U integrate Dadon Island's units, the seed.

319
00:18:46,240 --> 00:18:50,080
Speaker 1: This thing was really all about Staten Island. The lawyer

320
00:18:50,120 --> 00:18:52,840
Speaker 1: from the Civil Liberties Union encountered every time a big

321
00:18:52,920 --> 00:18:55,320
Speaker 1: citywide initiative comes up for debate. We got to get

322
00:18:55,320 --> 00:18:57,120
Speaker 1: those guys from Staten Island to agree to it.

323
00:18:58,320 --> 00:19:01,400
Speaker 3: Why not have total at large elections and give every

324
00:19:01,480 --> 00:19:05,960
Speaker 3: Staten Islander six votes, every brooklyn Er won, every Queen's two,

325
00:19:06,120 --> 00:19:10,560
Speaker 3: every Bronx three, of Manhattan three and Bronx or could

326
00:19:10,600 --> 00:19:11,200
Speaker 3: we do that?

327
00:19:11,840 --> 00:19:14,760
Speaker 1: The city's lawyer was arguing that Staten Island was holding

328
00:19:14,800 --> 00:19:15,880
Speaker 1: the rest of New York back.

329
00:19:17,000 --> 00:19:19,880
Speaker 3: There were three six to five votes recently where we're

330
00:19:19,880 --> 00:19:23,960
Speaker 3: a Staten Island, weighted by virtue of population. Those votes

331
00:19:24,040 --> 00:19:28,880
Speaker 3: on a incineration plant, on homeless shelters, and on middle

332
00:19:28,880 --> 00:19:31,480
Speaker 3: income housing in the Bronx all would have gone the

333
00:19:31,480 --> 00:19:35,080
Speaker 3: other way. They all would have been the opposite result.

334
00:19:38,760 --> 00:19:41,440
Speaker 1: In the end, the court agreed. They ruled that the

335
00:19:41,480 --> 00:19:45,520
Speaker 1: structure of New York City government was unconstitutional because ultimately,

336
00:19:45,640 --> 00:19:49,000
Speaker 1: the population of a place should determine the representation it gets.

337
00:19:50,000 --> 00:19:53,240
Speaker 1: The entire system of government in New York City was

338
00:19:53,280 --> 00:19:58,080
Speaker 1: being redrawn, and one thing was certain, Staten Island was

339
00:19:58,160 --> 00:20:01,840
Speaker 1: going to lose a whole lot of power. That's when

340
00:20:01,840 --> 00:20:05,720
Speaker 1: secession kicked into gear. But the reason this movement took

341
00:20:05,760 --> 00:20:10,639
Speaker 1: off wasn't because everyone was intricately following this new voting system.

342
00:20:10,960 --> 00:20:13,600
Speaker 1: It had to do with something a whole lot deeper,

343
00:20:14,240 --> 00:20:16,640
Speaker 1: with people who didn't just want to get their old

344
00:20:16,720 --> 00:20:20,760
Speaker 1: votes back, but who wanted to get their old island back.

345
00:20:23,800 --> 00:20:39,639
Speaker 1: That's after the break. One day on the island, in

346
00:20:39,680 --> 00:20:42,600
Speaker 1: my attempt to understand the secessionist's mind, I sat down

347
00:20:42,640 --> 00:20:46,520
Speaker 1: with a local attorney named Bobby Scamerondella. I'd seen Scamerondella

348
00:20:46,560 --> 00:20:49,000
Speaker 1: in those videotapes alongside Dan Singletary.

349
00:20:50,120 --> 00:20:54,680
Speaker 11: My primary involvement with it was as a debate. There

350
00:20:54,720 --> 00:20:59,440
Speaker 11: were a series of debates conducted by all sorts of

351
00:20:59,560 --> 00:21:04,040
Speaker 11: civic organizations on Staten Island where they would invite a

352
00:21:04,080 --> 00:21:07,920
Speaker 11: pro secessionist and an anti successionist to come before these

353
00:21:08,840 --> 00:21:09,600
Speaker 11: civic groups.

354
00:21:10,760 --> 00:21:13,080
Speaker 1: He was an absolute bruiser on the debate stage, arguing

355
00:21:13,200 --> 00:21:16,640
Speaker 1: for secession. I met him in his law office, which

356
00:21:16,680 --> 00:21:19,240
Speaker 1: had these led lights on the ceiling that changed color

357
00:21:19,280 --> 00:21:23,520
Speaker 1: as we spoke. Unlike the Singletaries, Scameronella grew up on

358
00:21:23,560 --> 00:21:26,560
Speaker 1: Staten Island. He remembered it from way back when.

359
00:21:27,400 --> 00:21:29,760
Speaker 11: I mean it was like Dyllick. I grew up in

360
00:21:29,760 --> 00:21:34,200
Speaker 11: an area was wooded right after nineteen sixty four. When

361
00:21:34,200 --> 00:21:37,240
Speaker 11: the bridge was built, it was culture shock, even for

362
00:21:37,480 --> 00:21:39,360
Speaker 11: I guess at the time of fourteen year old boy.

363
00:21:40,240 --> 00:21:41,400
Speaker 8: I lived in an area.

364
00:21:41,200 --> 00:21:45,600
Speaker 11: Called Sunnyside, and the Staten Island Expressway which was built

365
00:21:45,640 --> 00:21:50,639
Speaker 11: along with the bridge. It it just went through this huge

366
00:21:50,720 --> 00:21:53,640
Speaker 11: wooded area that I used to play in. I'll remember

367
00:21:53,680 --> 00:21:57,040
Speaker 11: to the day I died waking up in this huge

368
00:21:57,040 --> 00:22:00,720
Speaker 11: wooded area where I used to play was gone.

369
00:22:03,360 --> 00:22:06,280
Speaker 1: The great irony of Staten Island secession is that back

370
00:22:06,320 --> 00:22:09,680
Speaker 1: when the city consolidated, No Burrow had been more enthusiast

371
00:22:09,800 --> 00:22:13,600
Speaker 1: stick about joining. But they regretted that decision almost immediately.

372
00:22:14,520 --> 00:22:16,960
Speaker 1: There were a series of attempts to fix that problem,

373
00:22:17,280 --> 00:22:19,840
Speaker 1: to make this distant place feel like it was part

374
00:22:19,880 --> 00:22:22,879
Speaker 1: of the city, but they all failed. There was the

375
00:22:22,920 --> 00:22:25,600
Speaker 1: train tunnel to Staten Island, which the city even broke

376
00:22:25,640 --> 00:22:29,000
Speaker 1: ground on and then never finished. The bridge was the

377
00:22:29,080 --> 00:22:32,760
Speaker 1: last gambit. The writer Gates Alise wrote his first book

378
00:22:32,800 --> 00:22:36,200
Speaker 1: about the building of that bridge. He wrote, the bridge

379
00:22:36,200 --> 00:22:38,160
Speaker 1: had become the symbol of hope.

380
00:22:40,800 --> 00:22:43,760
Speaker 4: For a sparsely populated Staten Island. This is an hour

381
00:22:43,920 --> 00:22:47,360
Speaker 4: almost a rediscovery from the island through the toll gate

382
00:22:47,600 --> 00:22:51,000
Speaker 4: rides the first vehicle and estimated twelve million vehicles will

383
00:22:51,040 --> 00:22:52,040
Speaker 4: follow in the first year.

384
00:22:53,560 --> 00:22:56,040
Speaker 1: This bridge was a big deal and for the rest

385
00:22:56,040 --> 00:22:57,680
Speaker 1: of New York it was like it had opened up

386
00:22:57,680 --> 00:23:00,480
Speaker 1: a portal to a whole new world. Here's a newsreel

387
00:23:00,520 --> 00:23:03,520
Speaker 1: from nineteen sixty four when the bridge first opened.

388
00:23:04,240 --> 00:23:07,080
Speaker 4: Across the Narrows the entrance to New York Harbor, the

389
00:23:07,160 --> 00:23:10,800
Speaker 4: longest suspension bridge in the world. Town On Narrows Bridge

390
00:23:10,840 --> 00:23:13,200
Speaker 4: is the first fixed link between Staten Island and the

391
00:23:13,200 --> 00:23:14,240
Speaker 4: City's for other.

392
00:23:14,080 --> 00:23:18,840
Speaker 1: Boroughs, everything on the island is pre or post bridge,

393
00:23:19,760 --> 00:23:23,680
Speaker 1: pre bridge. It was a kind of paradise. You collic farmland,

394
00:23:23,880 --> 00:23:28,000
Speaker 1: rolling hills, shoals of oysters rimming the island. Post bridge,

395
00:23:28,400 --> 00:23:32,000
Speaker 1: it was all tiki, tax suburban houses, white people fleeing

396
00:23:32,040 --> 00:23:35,760
Speaker 1: the increasingly black and brown Brooklyn and of course the

397
00:23:35,880 --> 00:23:42,159
Speaker 1: ever expanding mountains of trash. To be from Staten Island

398
00:23:42,440 --> 00:23:45,760
Speaker 1: is to have this sense that something grand has been

399
00:23:45,800 --> 00:23:48,040
Speaker 1: buried under garbage and forgotten.

400
00:23:48,920 --> 00:23:50,920
Speaker 11: But it wasn't the Board of Estimate that changed that.

401
00:23:50,960 --> 00:23:52,960
Speaker 11: It was a very sound Narrows Bridge that changed that.

402
00:23:54,920 --> 00:23:57,200
Speaker 1: And so here we are, well, let's look at that

403
00:23:57,240 --> 00:24:01,560
Speaker 1: because one person one vote makes sense. Yeah, so but

404
00:24:01,600 --> 00:24:04,480
Speaker 1: then what is that what is that missing? That ruling.

405
00:24:06,640 --> 00:24:14,160
Speaker 11: Staten Island was uh, culturally and geographically different than the

406
00:24:14,240 --> 00:24:16,600
Speaker 11: rest of the City of New York. And and I'll

407
00:24:16,600 --> 00:24:19,200
Speaker 11: go so far as to say physically in the sense

408
00:24:19,240 --> 00:24:25,040
Speaker 11: that uh, Staten Island's an island out there. It just

409
00:24:26,000 --> 00:24:26,680
Speaker 11: it just is.

410
00:24:30,680 --> 00:24:32,920
Speaker 1: In the New York Times at the height of secession,

411
00:24:33,400 --> 00:24:36,440
Speaker 1: one Staten Islander said, the first thing an independent Staten

412
00:24:36,440 --> 00:24:39,760
Speaker 1: Island should do is quote, tear down the Arizona and

413
00:24:39,800 --> 00:24:42,359
Speaker 1: Narrows Bridge and let us go back to life the

414
00:24:42,400 --> 00:24:48,760
Speaker 1: way it used to be. Talking to Scamerondella, I felt

415
00:24:48,760 --> 00:24:52,080
Speaker 1: like that was a big piece of it for him.

416
00:24:52,240 --> 00:24:55,520
Speaker 1: How would you convince people pretend I'm I'm a skeptic,

417
00:24:55,560 --> 00:24:56,120
Speaker 1: make the pitch.

418
00:24:57,120 --> 00:25:01,359
Speaker 11: The bottom line is really my position was to ask yourself,

419
00:25:01,400 --> 00:25:05,000
Speaker 11: what cost freedom? What cost freedom? You have no say

420
00:25:06,200 --> 00:25:09,760
Speaker 11: over what happens in your community? Virtually no says or

421
00:25:09,920 --> 00:25:12,480
Speaker 11: is your schools and your police department, your fire department

422
00:25:12,640 --> 00:25:14,240
Speaker 11: and everything else is not run here?

423
00:25:14,920 --> 00:25:15,120
Speaker 5: Just not.

424
00:25:16,040 --> 00:25:18,680
Speaker 1: Was anyone opposed to it because they're like New York City,

425
00:25:18,720 --> 00:25:20,600
Speaker 1: greatest city in the world, and we're part of it.

426
00:25:21,360 --> 00:25:22,440
Speaker 1: One of the five boroughs.

427
00:25:23,040 --> 00:25:25,520
Speaker 11: We can't be pushed any further away from the big city.

428
00:25:25,560 --> 00:25:27,560
Speaker 11: You want to go to Broadway, Go to Broadway? Right,

429
00:25:27,720 --> 00:25:29,400
Speaker 11: want a job all Wall Street? Go get a job

430
00:25:29,480 --> 00:25:31,840
Speaker 11: on Wall Street. None of that's going to change. None

431
00:25:31,880 --> 00:25:33,440
Speaker 11: of it's going to go to a Yankee game. Go

432
00:25:33,440 --> 00:25:37,480
Speaker 11: to a Yankee game. By seceding, what are you giving up?

433
00:25:38,360 --> 00:25:40,760
Speaker 11: You can't say I live in the City of New York.

434
00:25:45,480 --> 00:25:48,520
Speaker 1: This series is about the politics of resentment and alienation

435
00:25:48,880 --> 00:25:51,480
Speaker 1: and how we handle them, and this was for me

436
00:25:51,840 --> 00:25:55,000
Speaker 1: an interesting moment in the case study. There's a big

437
00:25:55,000 --> 00:25:58,320
Speaker 1: difference between feeling you're treated poorly and feeling that you've

438
00:25:58,360 --> 00:26:01,879
Speaker 1: lost something. The former might lead to a quest for justice,

439
00:26:02,480 --> 00:26:08,440
Speaker 1: the latter leads to resentment. Secession wasn't just Dan Singletary's

440
00:26:08,520 --> 00:26:12,359
Speaker 1: arguments about voting structures and the quality of life. There

441
00:26:12,520 --> 00:26:15,000
Speaker 1: was for a lot of Staten Islanders the feeling that

442
00:26:15,080 --> 00:26:19,320
Speaker 1: something had been taken away from them. Scamerdella was that

443
00:26:19,440 --> 00:26:26,960
Speaker 1: kind of secessionist. Something powerful was taking shape on Staten Island.

444
00:26:28,000 --> 00:26:31,440
Speaker 1: It was going to lead somewhere big, and so a

445
00:26:31,440 --> 00:26:34,640
Speaker 1: group of people got together on the island to try

446
00:26:34,760 --> 00:26:39,000
Speaker 1: and stop it. That's next week it's.

447
00:26:38,880 --> 00:26:39,600
Speaker 8: A pipe dream.

448
00:26:39,680 --> 00:26:40,760
Speaker 9: It's just not going to happen.

449
00:26:41,320 --> 00:26:45,400
Speaker 7: You have just seen a perfect example, a classic example

450
00:26:45,440 --> 00:26:48,200
Speaker 7: of what's being played out in what's called the politics

451
00:26:48,200 --> 00:26:48,680
Speaker 7: of fear.

452
00:26:50,000 --> 00:26:54,040
Speaker 8: There's nothing worse than having two islands next to each other.

453
00:26:55,000 --> 00:26:55,880
Speaker 8: We can't stand them.

454
00:26:56,520 --> 00:27:01,680
Speaker 3: All of you who are in favor of seceding from

455
00:27:01,680 --> 00:27:05,800
Speaker 3: the City of New York, would you please raise your hands?

456
00:27:11,840 --> 00:27:14,280
Speaker 1: The Staten Island Problem is written and reported by me

457
00:27:14,560 --> 00:27:18,240
Speaker 1: Ben Mattapaffrey, who was produced by Lucy Sullivan with Nina

458
00:27:18,280 --> 00:27:22,240
Speaker 1: Bird Lawrence. Our editor is Karen Shakergee. Our executive producer

459
00:27:22,360 --> 00:27:25,960
Speaker 1: is Jacob Smith. Fact checking by Sam Russick, Sound design

460
00:27:26,000 --> 00:27:30,320
Speaker 1: and mastering by Jake Gorsky. Original music by Stellwagon, Symfinet,

461
00:27:30,560 --> 00:27:34,280
Speaker 1: Luis Garra and Jake Gorsky. Special thanks to Todd Reynolds

462
00:27:34,360 --> 00:27:37,280
Speaker 1: for his track The Solution from the album Outer Borough,

463
00:27:37,640 --> 00:27:39,639
Speaker 1: and to the College of Staten Island and the New

464
00:27:39,720 --> 00:27:42,880
Speaker 1: York City Municipal Archives for all of the amazing tape,

465
00:27:43,280 --> 00:27:45,480
Speaker 1: and to Daniel M. Erwir for his book How to

466
00:27:45,560 --> 00:27:47,920
Speaker 1: Hide an Empire, which is where I learned about the

467
00:27:47,960 --> 00:27:52,640
Speaker 1: logo map. And thanks, of course to Malcolm Gladwell I'm

468
00:27:52,680 --> 00:28:06,680
Speaker 1: Ben Mattaphaffrey,